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"Don't go to a museum with a destination.
Museums are wormholes to other worlds. They are ecstasy
machines."
Jerry Saltz
Jerry Saltz, American art critic, invites us to see museums not as static showcases, but portals into layered histories and alternative worlds. Like stepping through a wormhole, we encounter artefacts as guiding constellations across meaning, identity, memory, and moral challenge. Just as visitors navigate surprising corridors in a gallery, trustees of museums and heritage charities now navigate an evolving legal landscape shaped by recent charity law reforms. The legal world of trusteeship can feel "upside down", where moral intuition must intersect with statutory authority, and where the law sometimes expands choices and sometimes creates new constraints.
Moral grounds and legal authority
Traditionally, if a charity wanted to dispose of property, including valuable artefacts, for moral reasons in circumstances where no legal duty to do so existed, trustees were required to apply to the Charity Commission for authority. These transactions were labelled ex gratia or moral payments under section 106 of the Charities Act 2011, requiring commission permission because trustees otherwise lacked power to dispose of assets outside their purposes.
That regime has now shifted. The Charities Act 2022, with key provisions implemented from 27 November 2025, introduced a new statutory power in section 331A. This allows trustees to make small ex gratia transfers without prior Charity Commission approval, provided they meet objective criteria.
Under this new power, trustees must ensure that:
- the asset or payment falls below set thresholds linked to the charity's gross income (e.g., up to £20,000 for charities with gross income over £1 million; lower limits for smaller charities);
- they are satisfied trustees could reasonably be regarded as being under a moral obligation to make the transfer;
- no other legal power already exists for the transaction; and
- the charity's governing document does not prohibit it.
Where transfers exceed those thresholds or fall outside these conditions, trustees must still seek authorisation under the section 106 regime, as interpreted in the Charity Commission's guidance on moral payments (CC7). This guidance was updated to reflect these changes, including the move from a subjective moral test ("trustees feel obliged") to an objective one ("trustees could reasonably be regarded as under obligation").
Nevertheless, while legal powers have been clarified in specific ways, the Commission's guidance is not a general policy on restitution or repatriation, it focuses narrowly on moral payments under charity law, not the full ethical and cultural context of returns.
Museums and moral navigation
Many trustees now have structured tests and thresholds to help them weigh moral reasoning within legal decisions. Yet this legal latitude doesn't always translate into real-world capacity. Smaller institutions often lack the funds, technical skills, or digital resources to create high-fidelity replicas or engaging alternatives if original artefacts leave their walls.
Consider the V&A's Cast Courts display, famous for including reproductions of Michelangelo's David and Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise - the wonders of replicas are beyond the purse of most museums.
Repatriation as exploration
Restitution efforts by museums across the UK reveal varied legal foundations and institutional realities. University museums and independent trusts, such as Glasgow, Newcastle, Horniman, Exeter, Oxford, and Manchester, have returned Benin Bronzes, indigenous regalia, and human remains. These returns have not generally been made under the new section 331A power, but through negotiated agreements with source communities, often relying on existing charity law frameworks, bespoke arrangements and Charity Commission authorisation under section 106 rather than the new self‑authorisation power.
That illustrates an important reality: the 2022 reforms clarify the law for small transfers, but major restitution initiatives still often involve complex legal pathways that predate the new powers. Moreover, guidance and legislation make explicit that certain statutory national museums cannot use the self-authorisation power for moral transfers involving collection items because their founding statutes restrict disposal authority. These restrictions are not a matter of policy but of law, a structural boundary within which trustees must operate. Where disposal by direct transfer is not legally available, museums can sometimes pursue educational activities presenting ethical arguments for restitution so long as such activity furthers the charity's purposes and does not cross into unauthorised political campaigning.
Southwood v Attorney General [2000].
National and Statutory Museums: distinct legal landscapes
Major national institutions, including some London museums established by Acts of Parliament, face unique constraints. Statutory frameworks often restrict trustees' authority to dispose of collections, limiting even moral transfers. In these cases, self-authorisation powers may apply to other assets, but not to core collection items.
That said, some larger museums sit within trust or charitable frameworks that do permit the use of self-authorisation powers, where governing documents allow it. So, while legal boundaries exist, they depend on each institution's unique statutory or trust-based architecture.
An upside-down two-tier museum system
In practice, this generates a two-tier landscape:
- Statutory museums, governed by specific legislation, often face legal constraints that limit disposal even on moral grounds.
- Museums operating under general charity law, enjoy clearer authority within thresholds, but often have fewer resources to mitigate loss of artefacts or provide substitutes like digital experiences.
Donor preferences also play into these dynamics. Benefactors may favour institutions with strong legal protections against disposals, thereby bolstering collections in statutory, resource-rich museums. Collaboration between statutory and other museums through loans, shared expertise, digital platforms, and joint exhibitions, can help keep objects accessible to the public.
The Charity Commission's updated guidance emphasises that trustees must satisfy themselves that they could reasonably be regarded as being under a moral obligation when making moral payments and must ensure decisions comply with legal duties and public-benefit principles.
Returning to Saltz's insight, museums are wormholes to other worlds, spaces that should expand imagination, not narrow it. Over-curation or rigid frameworks can constrain curiosity. Instead, museums should champion exploration, acknowledging that their collections are not just objects but nodes within an interconnected world of cultures and histories.
As we enter a new cultural era, one defined by collaboration rather than isolation, the return of the 70-metre-long Bayeux Tapestry to Britain this September, nearly a thousand years after its creation, offers a powerful and timely metaphor. The tapestry itself is a medieval wormhole, a stitched narrative of battle, ambition, propaganda, and intrigue, telling one story on its surface while hinting at another beneath. It represents an early "upside down" world where history is framed by those who prevailed.
Its imagery runs in parallel strands, much like the Norman story itself: heroic conquest on one level, political manoeuvre and moral ambiguity on another. Its return reminds us that museums are not neutral storehouses, but places where power, memory, and meaning intersect. Just as the Norman narrative unravels through layered scenes of loyalty and betrayal, today's museums must navigate overlapping stories of ownership, restitution, and responsibility.
Whether small, national, or operating at the edges of the strange, what ultimately matters is not simply what we hold, but how we share it ethically, imaginatively, and collaboratively ensuring that collections remain portals to curiosity rather than monuments to possession.
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