A life for culture, the culture of a life

“I believe,” explains Diana Bracco, “that doing business also means doing culture and therefore, when one has the chance, not only ensuring the company’s financial health but also working for the local area, for one’s own community, for people’s moral growth. A company can and must produce beauty.” This is why Bracco has, over the years, created an impressive series of initiatives, first as a company and later, since 2010, with the Bracco Foundation, including projects that range from painting to music, from architecture to theater. “We work in three macro areas: science, culture and social projects,” says the president, before explaining, “Looking back through our cultural initiatives these past years, I recall some with particular fondness. Like the restoration of the Pope Alexander VII Chigi Gallery in the Quirinal Palace for the 150th anniversary of Italian Unification, the exhibitions at the National Gallery of Washington to support and promote Italian art abroad, or the now decade-long, multidisciplinary support of the talented youth at the La Scala Theater Academy. Rather than simple financial contributions, these have been high-quality projects, organized with prestigious partners that created added cultural and scientific value. Over the years, many of our cultural initiatives – from the Giorgione exhibition to the Caravaggio – were in the spirit of the marriage of art and science: imaging techniques, in fact, allow us to reveal many “secrets” of masterpieces (paintings, musical instruments, etc.), and it has been a natural fit for us to provide our expertise to curators and restorers in this field.”

Text adapted from the book: Andrea Zaghi, Memory and the future. At the heart of industrial innovation in the third millennium, Luiss University Press, Rome 2021.