The VG&M has also attracted a number of celebrity visitors.

“Scientist and TV presenter Lord Robert Winston viewed the museum’s collection of wax-models, which demonstrate the history of medical teaching at Liverpool,” reveals Clough.

“Top Gear presenter James May visited an exhibition of rocket and rotary engines from the university’s engineering department, and survival expert Ray Mears took a particular interest in the our display of dinosaur footprints.”

The next exhibition to open, in early October, will be a retrospective spanning 30 years of the artist Pete Clarke, who was instrumental in setting up the successful Eight Days a Week Liverpool-Cologne cultural exchange.

VG&M director Matthew Clough says: “It will include quite a lot of works on paper and will show that in some ways his drawings and prints are more interesting than his paintings.”

Liverpool sculptor Stephen Hitchin is creating a selection of new work for a solo exhibition. Some pieces will be placed around the red brick building as well as in the gallery space.

Based at the city centre Bridewell Studios, where Mersey Poet Adrian Henri and Turner Prize winner Anish Kapoor have also worked, Hitchin is head of sculpture at Wirral Metropolitan College. He is best known for his commissioned work, including his Pool of Life ceramic piece, at the Liverpool Women’s Hospital.

The Tate Museum, housed in the former library, will show an exhibition on the history of the denture during the 2009/10 programme, and is planning one about particle physics for 2010/11.