¹ My critique refers to the ICOM Code for Ethics of Museums, which I take to have a universal application. From now on whenever I mention the museum code of ethics or codes of museum ethics I refer to the set of principles and rules introduced by ICOM. See: http://icom.museum/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/Codes/code_ethics2013_eng.pdf.

² Luhmann, N., Trust and Power: Two Works (Chichester: Wiley, 1979)Google Scholar.

³ On the application of trust in society and social sciences, see Cook, K. S. (ed), Trust in Society (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001)Google Scholar, and Bachmann, R. and Zaheer, A. (eds), Handbook of Trust Research (Cheltenham, UK and Northampton MA, USA: Edward Elgar, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an interdisciplinary approach to trust, see Gambetta, D. (ed), Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations (New York and Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988)Google Scholar. A general introduction to trust in philosophy is provided in Hawley, K., Trust: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the relationship between trust and epistemology, see Faulkner, P., Knowledge on Trust (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Here I follow A. Baier's model for trust as entrusting. See Baier, A., ‘Trust and Anti-Trust’, Ethics 96 (1986), 231–260 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Kopytoff, I., ‘The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process’, in Appadurai, A. (ed), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 69–94 Google Scholar.

⁶ Edson, G., Museum Ethics (London: Routledge, 1997)Google Scholar and Marstine, J. (ed), The Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics (London: Routledge, 2011)Google Scholar.

⁷ Meskell, L., ‘Negative Heritage and Past Mastering in Archaeology’, Anthropological Quarterly 75 (2010), 557–574 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ On the birth of the universal museum, see Abt, J., ‘The Origins of the Public Museum’, in Macdonald, S. (ed), A Companion to Museum Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 115–134 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Duncan, C. and Wallach, A., ‘The universal survey museum’, in Carbonell, B. Messias (ed), Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 51–70 Google Scholar; and Caygill, M., ‘Sloane's Will and the Establishment of the British Museum’, in MacGregor, A. (ed), Sir Hans Sloane. Collector, Scientist, Antiquary, Founding Father of the British Museum (London: British Museum Press, 1994), 45–68 Google Scholar.

⁹ Cuno, J., Museums Matter: In Praise of the Encylopedic Museum (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cuno presents four categories of museums, but he does not include museums of commemoration in his discussion.

¹⁰ See Barley, N., The Art of Benin (London: The British Museum Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

¹¹ Merryman, J. H., ‘Cultural Property Ethics’, International Journal of Cultural Property 7 (1998), 21–31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² Bennett, T., The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar.

¹³ It is worth noting here that trusteeship as a model of museum governance is prominent in both the United Kingdom and the United States. For instance, both the British Museum and the Smithsonian Institution are managed by a board of trustees. Museums in continental Europe do not tend to follow the model of trusteeship because the idea of equitable trusts is rooted in Anglo-Saxon law and not in Roman law, which dominates the lawmaking institutions of continental Europe. Outside the UK and USA national museums and antiquities authorities are run as government agencies under the control of the ministers. Greece and India are good examples here. However, there are exceptions: for instance, the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam is governed by trustees.

¹⁴ This material is quoted, with the author's permission, from an unpublished earlier version of Williams, J., ‘Parliaments, Museums, Trustees, and the Provision of Public Benefit in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World’, Huntington Library Quarterly 76 (2013), 195–214 Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ For more on trusts law see Moffat, G., Trusts Law: Texts and Material (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷ Bok, S., Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (London: Quartet, 1980)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Hawley, K., ‘Trust, Distrust and Commitment’, Noûs 48 (2014), 1–20 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Hawley, Trust: A Very Short Introduction, op. cit.

¹⁹ Philosophers have proposed different accounts of trust. Some accounts defend the idea that trust can be explained as a form of rational choice theory. Advocates of this type of account claim that when A trusts B with C, A hands over A's interests in C to B, and B takes care of C because B has A's interests at heart. See Russell, H., Trust (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006)Google ScholarPubMed. K. Jones suggests an alternative account, according to which to trust someone is to express an affective attitude. For Jones, A trusts B with C, because A believes that B is trustworthy. What matters for this account is that B's motives be trustworthy. See Jones, K., ‘Trust as an Affective Attitude’, Ethics 107 (1996), 4–25 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A. Baier argues that trust depends on the exercise of good will. A trusts B with C and B takes care of C by exercising B's good will. See Baier, A., ‘Trust and Anti-Trust’, Ethics 96 (1986), 231–260 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Advocates of each of these accounts agree that trust can be understood in terms of a tripartite relationship, but they differ in the significance they accord to different poles of the relationship. My concern here is not to explore these accounts of trust but to show how trust contributes to the ethics of museum trusteeship.

²⁰ See MacGregor, N., A History of the World in 100 Objects (London: Allen Lane, 2010)Google Scholar.

²¹ Annette Baier examines how we understand trust and its opposite in the course of arguing for the place of women in the application of ethical concepts. See Baier, ‘Trust and Anti-Trust’, op. cit. Although Baier's analysis is compelling, she does not apply it within a practical account of trusteeship. Nonetheless, her understanding of trust as entrusting has significant implications for our understanding of museums’ duty of care.

²² Ibid., 235–237.

²³ I. Kopytoff, ‘The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process’, op. cit.

²⁴ Jody, J., ‘Reinvigorating Object Biography: Reproducing the Drama of Object Lives’, World Archaeology 41 (2009), 540–556 Google Scholar.

²⁵ Gosden, C. and Marshall, Y., ‘The Cultural Biography of Objects’, World Archaeology 31 (1999), 169–178 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ The topic of narrative understanding merits further exploration. Here, however, my aim is not to focus on narrative understanding but to illuminate the role that the narrative context of the biography of objects plays in understanding museum trusteeship. See Velleman, J. D., ‘Narrative Explanation’, The Philosophical Review 112 (2003), 1–25 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ Dillon, R.S., ‘Respect and Care: Toward Moral Integration’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (1992), 105–132 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ According to Lowenthal, the idea that underpins our understanding of the ethical role of trusteeship with regard to heritage objects is rooted in the medieval European conception of family duty. See Lowenthal, D., Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (New York: The Free Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

²⁹ MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects, op. cit., chapter 89.

³⁰ To find out how Aboriginals understand their own encounter with Captain Cook and their perception of the Bark Shield see Nugent, M., Cook Was Here (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

³¹ I would like to thank Jonathan Williams for his insightful comments and long debates on museum trusteeship, Ivan Gaskell for his advice on the museum governance, and Eleanor Chatburn, Ian Kidd, Jenny Newell and Geoffrey Scarre for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I would also like to thank the organizers of ‘Philosophy and Museums: Ethics, Aesthetics and Ontology’ conference for accepting my paper and giving me the chance to present an earlier version of this paper.