What Does “Held in Trust” Actually Mean?

SaveMPM.org — Collections & Public Trust Series

The Legal and Ethical Genealogy of a Phrase — and Why It Matters Right Now in Milwaukee

The phrase “held in trust” sounds like museum jargon, but it is one of the most consequential legal and ethical concepts in the museum world. Its meaning — and who has the power to define it — sits at the very center of what is happening to the Milwaukee Public Museum.

1. A Phrase with Ancient Roots

Every accredited museum in the United States is required, in one form or another, to declare that its collections are held in trust for the public. You will find the phrase in donor agreements, collections management policies, annual reports, accreditation applications, and board resolutions. It is treated almost as a self-evident truth — a statement so obvious it barely requires explanation.

But when you pull the phrase apart, you quickly discover that its origins are ancient, its legal status is contested, and its practical implications are enormous. Understanding where it came from, and what it actually obligates a museum to do, is not an academic exercise. In Milwaukee today, it is the difference between whether the Streets of Old Milwaukee, the European Village, and the Rainforest belong to the public or to a private nonprofit preparing to move into a new building.

The concept of a public trust — that certain resources belong not to any individual or institution but to the community as a whole — traces its lineage back to Roman law. The Institutes of Justinian, compiled in 535 CE, articulated a principle that some things were res communes: common things, belonging to everyone and to no one. The air, running water, the sea, and the shores of the sea were understood as inalienable public goods that no private party could legitimately claim.

That principle traveled through centuries of English common law, appearing in Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest, which recognized that certain lands held by the Crown were held on behalf of the nation. When the United States was founded and incorporated English common law, it inherited this tradition. In American law, the doctrine was initially focused on navigable waterways and tidelands. Its migration into the cultural sphere — museums, archives, historic preservation — was gradual and remains legally incomplete even today.

Courts in the United States have repeatedly declined to formally extend the public trust doctrine to artwork or museum collections as a matter of binding common law. The legal protection of museum collections as public trust resources therefore rests not primarily on judge-made common law but on a combination of nonprofit corporation law, charitable trust law, state attorney general oversight, and — critically — the voluntary ethical codes adopted by the museum profession itself.

2. The Museum Profession Builds Its Own Framework

Because courts were slow to extend hard legal protections to cultural collections, the museum profession stepped into the gap. The foundational moment in American collections stewardship is traced to 1881, when the US National Museum opened its first formal Registry Office. G. Brown Goode argued in his 1895 essay Principles of Museum Administration that the value of a collection is inseparable from the accuracy and completeness of its documentation. A specimen without documents is a virtually worthless object — unlisted, unknown, and lost.

This is the founding statement of modern collections management. Documentation is not bureaucratic overhead; it is what transforms an object from a possession into a public resource. It is what makes public trust real rather than theoretical.

The AAM's Code of Ethics for Museums, most recently revised in 2000, states that museums are organized as public trusts, holding their collections and information as a benefit for those they were established to serve. The code specifies that the stewardship of collections carries specific presumptions: rightful ownership, permanence, care, documentation, accessibility, and responsible disposal. Each is a concrete obligation, not merely an aspiration.

The AAM also addressed money directly: the collections are not the museum's savings account. Revenue from any deaccessioning must be used solely for the benefit of the collections, not for operating expenses, capital campaigns, or transition costs. The collections are not there to preserve the museum; the museum is there to preserve the collections.

ICOM's Code of Ethics, most recently updated in 2022, adopts the same framework globally. The UK Museums Association's 1998 definition puts it simply: museums are institutions that collect, safeguard and make accessible artefacts and specimens, which they hold in trust for society.

3. What the Obligation Actually Requires

Permanence: Objects accessioned into a museum's permanent collection are intended to be held permanently. Not until the foreseeable future, not until a new building is built — permanently. The permanence presumption is one reason deaccessioning is so carefully regulated: removing an object from the collection is an exceptional act requiring formal justification, not a routine management tool.

Documentation: Every accessioned object must be fully documented: origin, provenance, condition, location, all movements within and outside the institution, and the terms of acquisition. Documentation is what gives the public its ability to know what it owns. It also distinguishes an accessioned collection object from personal property — without formal documentation and accession, an object has no legal standing as a public asset.

Accessibility: Held in trust does not mean held in a vault. The trust obligation includes a duty of access. The public — for whose benefit the collection is held — must be able to use it through physical display, researcher access, and digital publication.

Responsible disposal with firm limits: Deaccessioning is a recognized practice. Objects may be removed from collections when they are redundant, outside the institution's mission, deteriorated beyond usability, or subject to a valid repatriation claim. What public trust prohibits absolutely is treating deaccessioning as a financial strategy. Selling collection objects to fund building transitions has been condemned by the AAM in the clearest possible terms.

State attorney general oversight: In the United States, the practical enforcement mechanism runs through each state's attorney general. Because museums are nonprofit corporations chartered to serve the public benefit, their assets — including collections — are legally charitable assets held for the public. State attorneys general have authority to review and challenge decisions involving those assets, including deaccessions, disposals, and significant policy changes.

4. The Milwaukee Public Museum and the Stakes of the Phrase

The Milwaukee Public Museum has been a public institution in the fullest sense since its founding. Its origins trace to 1851. City Alderman August Stirn obtained state legislation for the City of Milwaukee to accept the collection and establish a free public museum, which opened on May 24, 1884. In 1976, ownership transferred from the City to Milwaukee County. Today, Milwaukee County's Lease and Management Agreement explicitly states that the County owns the museum's collections held in public trust.

The Milwaukee Public Museum holds more than four million objects and specimens. Its iconic built environments — Streets of Old Milwaukee, the European Village, the Rainforest — are civic landmarks that generations of Milwaukeeans have grown up with. They are part of the inherited public culture of southeastern Wisconsin.

Both the 2016 and 2021 versions of MPM's Collections Policy (File No. 21-259) define 'Non-Accessioned Collections' identically and narrowly: Archives, Library, Photograph, Education, and departmental teaching collections — informational and media materials. Neither version of the policy changed this definition, and neither version extended it to built environments, dioramas, murals, or structural installations. The 2021 policy actually strengthened the restrictions on proceeds from any disposal, requiring that a restricted fund 'shall only be spent in accordance with' the policy's deaccession provisions — explicitly prohibiting use for building transition costs. Non-accessioned is not, under either policy, a synonym for 'personal property of MPM Inc.' The 2013 LMA's 'Personal Property' definition is limited to operational equipment, furniture, and office supplies, explicitly excluding Artifacts.

The problem, then, is not the Collections Policy itself — which is consistent and clear. The problem is the 2025 Plan for Disposition (File No. 25-586), which applies the term 'non-accessioned' and 'Personal Property' to the built environments and historic exhibits in a way that neither the Collections Policy nor the LMA authorizes. That plan asserts that MPM Inc. may sell those assets and retain the proceeds for transition costs — a claim that directly contradicts the policy documents it purports to operate under.

The consequence is now unfolding. The plan authorizes MPM to sell, donate, or discard the Streets of Old Milwaukee, the European Village, the Rainforest, and other historic environments — and to retain the proceeds to support transition costs for its new building, in direct violation of the policy requirement that any disposal proceeds be used solely for the direct care and acquisition of collections.

Both the 2016 and 2021 Collections Policies define 'Non-Accessioned Collections' identically — Archives, Library, Photograph, Education, and teaching materials. Neither policy authorizes what the 2025 Disposition Plan claims: that built environments and historic exhibits are non-accessioned personal property of MPM Inc., available for sale with proceeds retained for transition costs. The question is not what the policy says. It is why the Disposition Plan is allowed to contradict it.

Conclusion: The Phrase Does Real Work — or It Does Not

When a museum says its collections are held in trust for the public, it is making a claim that reaches back more than two thousand years through Roman law, through English common law, through the founding of American nonprofit jurisprudence, through G. Brown Goode's registry office in 1881, through the AAM's first code of ethics in 1925, and through decades of painstaking professional work by curators, registrars, and collections managers.

It is a claim that the objects in the institution's care are not the institution's private property, to be disposed of as management sees fit. They belong — morally, ethically, and in many legal contexts — to the public. The institution is the custodian, not the owner. Its obligations run not to its board, not to its donors, not to its new building fund, but to the community that trusted it with the irreplaceable.

In Milwaukee right now, that claim is being tested. The people of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County funded this museum across generations. They donated objects, paid admission, supported levies, and trusted that what they gave would be kept for their children and grandchildren. Understanding what held in trust actually means — and demanding that it be honored — is not nostalgia. It is the exercise of public ownership.

SaveMPM.org — Collections & Public Trust Series

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SaveMPM.org documents the Milwaukee Public Museum transition — examining public records, governance agreements, and asset classification decisions that affect publicly owned collections, exhibits, and historic environments.