Madonna - May 1, 2026 - October 1 2026

Night and Day: Bats + Bees
Celebrating Pollinators, food and Murano glass
A site specific installation by Judi Harvest
May 1 -October 1, 2026

Calle della Madonna
594 San Polo, Venice
O41-5223824

View the sculptures and price list of the installation

Night and Day: Bats + Bees, Judi Harvest’s 2026 installation at Trattoria alla Madonna. consists of handmade blown, one of a kind Murano glass honeybees, bats, fruits and vegetables inspired by the flora and fauna of the Laguna di Venezia. All made by Judi Harvest and Maestro Marco Giuman.

The centerpiece of the installation is Madonna, a mother bat and her pup, handmade in amethyst Murano glass. This installation brings awareness to endangered species including Murano glass masters. Cross-pollination, migration and preservation in nature, art and life are ongoing themes in Harvest's work. Night and Day and Harvest’s Murano Honey Garden help to preserve species and two colonies of beauty, Murano glass masters and honeybees, from extinction. The Murano Honey Garden is a successful example of sustainability, conservation and social sculpture, envisioned and created by Judi Harvest in 2013 for her exhibition DENATURED: Honeybees + Murano, a collateral exhibition for the Venice Biennale.

Judi Harvest and her 200,000 honeybees produce the only Murano honey, approximately 100 kilos per year. The honey is served at the Gritti Palace hotel and is available for purchase at Salotto di Rialto.

Some of Judi Harvest’s recent Murano glass commissions are:

Centrotavola Veneziano for the Gritti Palace Hotel, Venice. Tessutti plates and accessories for Armani Casa. The Sinai Awards, for Tablet Magazine, New York and SASSI for The Venice Gardens Foundation.

Harvest’s work is concerned with the fragility of life and the search for beauty. She is an interdisciplinary artist with a Masters in Fine Arts, working with Murano glass, oil and watercolor paintings, video and mixed media sculpture, all inspired by nature. The works are often human scale and interactive.

She became a beekeeper in 2006 when hearing about Colony Collapse Disorder, the name given to the mysterious disappearance of honeybees. In 2013, Harvest created a garden for honeybees on a forgotten field, behind the Giorgio Giuman factory in Serenella where she has worked since 1988. The Honey Garden continues to bring awareness to endangered honeybees and endangered glass masters, two colonies of beauty on the road to extinction.

The exhibition, DENATURED: Honeybees + Murano was part of the 2013 Venice Biennale. Thirteen years later, the four honeybee hives have flourished and the garden is an oasis, yet the glass masters are even more endangered. Harvest’s artworks and honey sales help support the garden and the honeybees in Murano.

Her current series titled NIGHT AND DAY: Bats + Bees is concerned with 24/7 pollination. When the bees go inside at sundown, the bats come out and pollinate the night blooming crops including bananas, chocolate, cashews, coffee, coconuts, agave for tequila, avocados, mangos, plus they eat 1000 mosquitoes each, per hour. Bats and bees are taken for granted and disappearing due to loss of habitat, pesticides, stress and misinformation.

Harvest’s mission is to bring awareness through art to their beauty, irreplaceable value to our ecosystem and their complex, fundamental lives which are inseparable from ours.

For Harvest, there is no difference between art and life.

Special thank you to

Lucio Rado, Trattoria alla Madonna, Giorgio Giuman and Marco Giuman, Murano Glass Masters and Nicoletta Zanon