Leisure and culture
Museums and galleries
Museums and galleries - loans, donations and bequests
Welcome To Wirral
Museums - Loans, donations and bequests
Wirral Museums Service has a large and varied collection of items from around the world and from all periods of history. The principal strengths, however, are mostly local but the wider collections provide the context for them. Efforts have been made to have pictures, documents and artefacts that reflect as well as possible the history and character of Wirral. There is a Collection Management Policy that details the existing collections and provides a guide to the direction of the development of those collections.
Items are often accepted as DONATIONS, which are outright gifts to the Wirral Museums collections. Donations are accepted when they fit in to the Collection Management Policy and a TRANSFER OF TITLE form will usually be completed. The donor must have the right to make the gift and their name will be recorded in the Accession Register. Donors often like to commemorate someone in making a gift and this information is recorded and used whenever that gift is shown in the museums.
BEQUESTS are donations that are made following the wishes of a Last Will & Testament. An executor can be instructed to contact Wirral Museums to offer items from a deceased's estate, the will should make it clear which items are being offered and whether any conditions would apply. Again, it would be common for the name of the benefactor to be used when the gift/s are on exhibition either within our own museums or elsewhere.
LOANS are temporary arrangements whereby Wirral Museums undertake to store and insure items in exchange for the use of them for display or research. They are usually done for a period of up to five years, but this may be renewable by mutual consent.
There is no such thing as a PERMANENT LOAN. If an arrangement is to be permanent, it should become a donation and the full details of the donor can be recorded and acknowledged whenever an item is used.
The collections are assets of Wirral Borough Council that are available for the public benefit in perpetuity. Museum collections are held in trust and are not in normal circumstances sold or traded. In the event of a very exceptional change in policy or collecting direction, museum collections could be transferred to another public museum where they would continue to be of benefit to the community.