♪ narrator: our world today is wealthier than ever. but not everyone shares in this wealth. today's young business leaders are challenging this. changing the way we think about money -- its power and its purpose. this is a new generation. this is the new philanthropy. ♪ beatrice trussardi is part of

one of italy's most famous fashion families. she is also one of italy's most provocative arts philanthropists. she is asking the question -- can art revitalized the city of milan? beatrice: we did our first exhibit outside our house -- actually, we did it exactly right behind there. it was a car with a van filled with mosaics. completely broken. it was fake, of course. massimiliano: we completed it initially at a night because we wanted the powerful sense of surprise. in the morning, two traffic policemen gave us a parking ticket. we got a 700 euro ticket. that immediately gives you a sense of how surprising and quite radical our operations were. narrator: beatrice's mission is to support radical artists and

to bring modern art to a public steeped in more classical styles. beatrice: what gives me a lot of satisfaction is bringing a message to people. to the people of the world. make people curious, make people think. the fashion brand is more than one century old. my great grandfather founded it. we are the fourth generation. and we are trying to bring contemporarity and innovations and a new freshness to an historical brand. ♪ beatrice: it is difficult to explain to someone who is not italian. in italy, we have these strong

legacies about family businesses. we have tons of family businesses and that is our dna. ♪ beatrice: the trussardi brand was born as a glove brand. it made fantastic glove leather, very high quality. in fact, they were sold to the royal english family. but in the -- in the 70's, nobody used to wear gloves anymore. and so my father had to think how to twist the brand into something else. he decided to take the same elements of quality, innovation, you know, the manufacturing innovation, and the quality of the material and translate those features in a new products. my father created a lifestyle

around the brand. it was not just a fashion brand, but about apparel and about accessories. he created so many products. bicycles, watches, furniture for the house. when my father passed away, i was living in new york. and i decided to come back and to carry on the legacy, the family legacy. the business. that was something i really strongly felt. the teaching i really bring with me about my father are creativity, passion for what we do, and enthusiasm. the most important heritage my father left me is to affect a

consciousness, to have an ethic. to follow his, her own talent. manfredi: beatrice is a very bright person, i think. she is extremely intelligent. she can get to the point very quickly. she also i think has the privilege and the smartness of choosing the right people and right right partners to basically develop her projects, no matter what the projects are. and they are leaders in terms of ability to create teams and manage teams. in ruma: beatrice is a silent leader.

what i mean by a silent leader is she is not a woman who is seeking the spotlight. but she doesn't shy away from the spotlight. the spotlight is interesting to her if it is a way to highlight the work that she is doing. ♪ beatrice: running the fashion company was a traditional thing for me. it is about legacy, it is about family tradition, which was an honor for me to do it. and also very challenging and very important. i think the foundation is more -- it is my personal project. it was founded by my father. it is also a family foundation. but it became my project. ♪ a massimiliano: my name is massimiliano gioni. i am the artistic director of the nicola trussardi foundation.

and now i spend time here in new york where i also work at the new museum. i have been working with beatrice since 2003 when she invited me to become the director of the foundation. and our collaboration now has lasted more than 10 years. i guess it is a sign that we work well together. i think of her mostly as a friend, but she is also a great accomplice and an enabler of artist's visions. and i think that is her strongest quality. italy is certainly a place that is often burdened by history. what we wanted to do and what we thought was also very much in keeping with the tradition of the trussardi family was to intersect history with the present. beatrice: i studied and i had a part of my life in new york. and i had some working experience there. as i came back to milan, i

realized that contemporary art was not as common or known as the antique art. of course, we are in italy. and italy has the most important cultural and artistic heritage. that was a challenge for me. and i decided to bring contemporary art to the people. ♪

♪ announcer: beatrice trussadi was only 30 years old when she took over and managed her century old family fashion business in milan. but while fashion is in her blood, she has known from a young age that art is really what gets her heart beating. beatrice: i decided to move to new york and attended nyu. i had exciting experiences. i did also some exciting experiences doing internships at and the moma, guggenheim, and the metropolitan. and those experiences really

impressed me and stimulated me when i came back to do something fantastic here. going to new york and being so much into this art world was such an experience. seeing so many galleries, museums that were fantastic. the huge exhibitions. ♪ in beatrice: italian people are so much creative people. are so much in contact with the beauty, with aesthetics, with -- with the arts. how is it possible that they are not so much used to contemporary art? massimiliano: beatrice and i started talking about our vision for the foundation. we decided that it was time to transform it and change it. and so we had this idea of bringing the foundation literally to the streets of milan, and to transform it into what we call a mobile museum or

a nomadic museum. so the idea became for each show, we would select either a public space, or a forgotten palazzo, or a historical space or building. and to stage exhibitions on this site. for every exhibition, there is a new site and there's a new artist working to transform the perception of this space, and by extension, also the perception of the city. michael: we have enough posh art venues architecturally all around in the world. where it often ends up, you have used all the money on the hardware. containing the artwork. making a posh building. and there is no budget left for showing interesting art projects. it is the opposite situation for trussardi. they don't have a fixed venue for the art. they use all the energy and all the financial resources on the projects. ♪

in beatrice: contemporary art breathes a new life to this historical building. with the foundation, we decided to bring art to the houses of the city of milan, which are fantastic palaces, buildings, squares. not so much used or abandoned. and bringing contemporary art to these locations allows the public to visit them and to appreciate them and to discover them with a different perspective. ♪ beatrice: first we select some locations, and then we identify one. we take the artist to the location. and then the artist is completely inspired by the

location. many times, i and massimiliano thought, should we get a place, a permanent place again? or should we keep moving from one location to the other? and actually, that is the trigger. because every time we are really challenged by the new location. massimiliano: the way in which our shows interact with the history of the city and the public life and the public arena of the city, that helps viewers to renew their relationships to the city and to public space. beatrice: sometimes the buildings were not functional. and we worked hard to allow the public to enter. and of course, after our project, we leave functional and

available for new projects. our hope is they can be used for something else. ♪ manfredi: one of our projects, which is a regeneration project, became a piece of art now for the city. beatrice: this artist decided to plant a wheat field in the center of milan. and the project just started from the city. we involved the city and more than 5000 people to join us in putting the seeds in this piece of land. it was an important cooperation with the citizenship of milan, but also with the people. people who love art and also

people who did not know anything about art. the wheat has been growing for three months. and at the end of july, we recalled the citizens to join in the harvest. manfredi: i was, you know, thrilled, to be honest, about this project. truly, we are bringing art in a place that is nothing related to art, but i felt this was an area where you should not go. it is dirty, it is polluted, there is criminality, and suddenly it becomes a park and it becomes an art installation, an art performance. listening to people, they were very happy. beatrice: the project ended with an important message the artist wanted to bring. which was everyone could take some seeds from the harvest and put them wherever they wanted to

create their own small wheat field all over the world -- in their house, in their garden, in some other abandoned piece of land. and that was very important. manfredi: contemporary art is difficult. it is not something that is for everybody. and instead the approach that she is having is making it easy for everybody. anyway, shareable for everybody. not just in a museum or in a whatever, a specialized gallery, or place. ruma: at the end of the day, i really believe she is an incredible storyteller. and so in milan, with the project and the foundation, she is sort of giving the local people of milan the opportunity to experience what she is talking about. so, it is not just about sowing seeds in your community. it's really -- to me, it is about sowing seeds for humanity. but she can tell that story after someone has experienced it for herself. so, she understands how to take

a very basic concept that has been around through centuries and modernize it and make it relevant. because she can speak to you in a language that you understand. ♪

♪ narrator: beatrice trussardi has pioneered a new form of philanthropy -- a mix of art, ideas, and conservation in her native milan. her latest exhibition is titled "the great mother." it is typical of her approach to business and philanthropy, bringing new ideas to an old setting. [speaking italian] >> [whispering] a real nun! [laughter] beatrice: this exhibition occupies almost 30 rooms of the

palace, the most important location in milan, this beautiful palazzo reale. we have more than 130 artists. and we have more than 400 pieces. our pieces cover paintings, drawings, the frescoes on the ceilings, they created a dialogue with the pieces of contemporary art. and so, this combination of the new and the old is like tradition and innovation, and which are also the features of the fashion brand. tradition and innovation. ♪ beatrice: we were inspired by the topic of the expo in milan this year. it is about nutrition, and the mother is the first source of nutrition. but also we were interested in talking about the evolution of

women for more than one century , through the interior struggles and the social struggles of women in the western world. massimiliano: my hope -- and i think beatrice's hope -- is contemporary art needs to enter into daily life of people, not just art professionals but any person who has an interest in understanding visual culture today. we live in a culture that is extremely visual. but very few occasions are given to us to have a critical relationship to images. and i think that is ultimately what our exhibitions do. ♪ beatrice: the foundation works with the artists, giving them the possibility and the opportunity to create new art pieces, new projects, site-specific, and giving them

exposure both locally in milan and italy and internationally. in fact, every time the exhibition was produced and financed, traveled internationally, and is hosted by another institution. ♪ michael: our intention was to wake up sleepwalkers in urban space, and make people wonder what has happened here. nothing like that had happened in milan before. and that was really groundbreaking and revolutionary. it was a very important moment for us because it was very early , on in our careers, and it was one of the bigger installations that we had done until that point. and it was fun for us to test out how would it function to go out and just play with a general

public. and it really inspired us. we have done many public sculptures ever since. massimiliano: we really specialize in approaching artists who have never done , public art or never have that sort of exposure to a wider public, and make that possible. and we always also find the resources to produce new works or commission new works that must interact with the very special venues in which they are shown. artworks are strange creatures , in that they become more complex and more enriching when they have around themselves have other histories and layers with which they can interact. ♪ massimiliano: it is quite remarkable how by going out into the streets, in a way, the city itself has responded. we like to say we don't do

public art, but we make art public. so that also means we use strategies to promote it, to present the shows that are much more horizontal, or open, or democratic. the shows are open very late. they are all open for free. so we really want the art to get in the way of the public rather than the other way around. ♪ michael: trussardi is almost like a small family business. and that means that beatrice herself is very involved. it is obvious that art is closest to beatrice's heart, and you can feel that. of course, she is excellent in fashion, but, like, art is where she comes from. ruma: it is about storytelling, it is about narrative. it is about using art as a vehicle and means to make people realize, you know, the environment around them.

the issues around them. what is beautiful about the world, and what should we, you know, what should we continue being passionate about? manfredi: i think when philanthropy is putting some money into something good for others, that is a good way to do philanthropy. but when there is the involvement of the leaders like in the case of beatrice, it gains a lot of substance. it gains a lot of -- it is more genuine. ruma: she brings that same spirit that she did at the brand into the foundation. and this isn't a woman who is just going to put an art exhibition together. this is a woman who is going to tackle important issues and use art as a vehicle to tell a narrative about important things that are happening in the world. and i think that, you know,

that doesn't happen very often. beatrice: time after time, project after project, a lot of people really follow us, come back, and make plans waiting to enter the opening exhibition, and really appreciating what we bring them. why contemporary art is important, why art is important? of course, it is so important. it is existential. artists create new worlds. they create new balances. they create new equilibrium. >> i like that. >> ok. ♪

♪ francine: welcome to "leaders." santander is one of the oldest and biggest banks in the world. with a footprint in spain, brazil, the u.k., and the united states, it is a truly global bank with more than 100 million customers. now recently, the spanish lender has undergone several big changes, most recently when emilio botin, the executive chairman, passed away in 2014. his daughter, ana botin, took over from her father and quickly implemented a share sale of 7.5 billion euros. well, in her first television interview since becoming chairman, i speak exclusivy