About Day of Giving

This is the day to let your generosity bloom! On Thursday, October 8, the Walters Art Museum is celebrating its fifth annual Day of Giving. To commemorate the 92nd birthday of our museum and its conservation lab, the third oldest in the country, we invite you to make a tangible impact on the objects in our collection that need pressing treatment and research with a gift of any size.

The Walters' extraordinary collection encompasses some 36,000 objects that span more than seven millennia. Protecting and preserving these objects is a vital part of the museum's mission to bring art and people together for enjoyment, discovery, and learning.

The Walters Day of Giving is the perfect opportunity to come together with other art lovers and give a gift to the next generation of museum visitors. This year, we're asking for your help to reach our goal of raising $30,000 in one day toward this critical conservation work.

Every gift makes an impact and supports the work of the conservation team at the Walters. Plus, when you make a gift now through October 8, your impact will be doubled thanks to a generous matching pledge. Make your contribution today!

More About This Year's Objects

This year, our conservators are hard at work restoring three beautiful 18th-century Sèvres porcelain vases. These delicate objects showcase incredible craftsmanship and imagination in both form and decoration, and they boast a connection with royalty across Europe.

Senior Objects Conservator Gregory Bailey repairs a 1779 Sèvres porcelain vase.

The Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory was established in Sèvres, France, in 1756 and has operated under the auspices of the French crown and government ever since. The manufactory helped establish the country's reputation for producing fine porcelain pieces that were both highly decorative and desirable.

The pair of green porcelain vases was made by Sèvres circa 1768 and decorated by artist Jean-Baptiste-Étienne Genest. One vase depicts sacrifices to Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit trees, gardens, and orchards. The other vase shows sacrifices to Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers and springtime.

These vases depict sacrifices to Flora (left) and Pomona (right).

The hand-painted scenes were completed in grisaille, a style using only shades of gray to imitate the three-dimensional look of sculpture. It is thought that this pair of vases was presented as part of a garniture, or set, with three other vases to Christian VII, king of Denmark and Norway, by Louis XV, king of France, in 1768. Only one other example of this Sèvres vase shape is known; it is in the collections of the Viscounts Gage at Firle Place, Sussex, England.

After cleaning the lid to one of the vases, Bailey prepares to inpaint a section.

Both of these green vases suffered cracks and other small losses and were previously repaired. However, that repair work used adhesive that has darkened over time. In addition, a previous restorer sanded over the adhesive, destroying some of the delicate grisaille decoration. To mitigate that damage, Senior Objects Conservator Gregory Bailey is working on cleaning the vases, decreasing the staining of the previous repair work, filling the losses, and inpainting the pieces so they appear whole again.

The blue vase is part of a three-piece set of vases produced by Sèvres in 1779. The large, lidded central vase is in the shape of an urn with handles in the form of female herms (sculptures consisting of a head and torso). Elaborate gilding and the deep blue ground, a color known as "bleu de roi," or king's blue—a signature color of Sèvres—set off delicately painted scenes of a port on the front of the vase and a garden on the back. This vase is one of only two known examples of this type; the other is in the British Royal Collection.

Bailey points out one of the porcelain losses along the rim of this vase.

The body of this blue vase was badly damaged and poorly restored in the past, covered with an abundance of overpaint and varnish. Those materials have begun to darken, necessitating intervention. Bailey is cleaning this piece, reducing the excess previous restoration materials, filling in losses, and then inpainting the piece and restoring the gilding.

Bailey points out losses to the gilding on the lid of this vase.

Bailey's conservation work will help these pieces appear much closer to the way they did when they were produced around 250 years ago. Help us reach our goal of raising $30,000 this year to preserve these objects and many others. A gift of just $23 will make an impact now and for generations to come!

Other Ways to Give

October 8 is not just Day of Giving. It is also Donor-Advised Fund (DAF) Day, a national day of giving for donor-advised fund holders across the country to direct their giving toward causes they care about most. Your DAF is already a powerful tool to accelerate your giving, but it has even greater potential when we pool many DAFs together.

Directing a gift to the Walter from your donor-advised fund today will directly support the care of our collection and be matched dollar for dollar! To make sure your DAF gift is counted (and matched!) on Day of Giving, contact Erin Mellott at emellott@thewalters.org.

Walters Day of Giving 2026

Support critical art conservation at the Walters Art Museum