The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has announced a $125 million pledge from trustee emeritus Oscar L. Tang and Agnes Hsu-Tang to fund the renovation of the museum’s Modern Wing.

The largest capital gift ever to the Met will enable the museum to move forward with a re-envisioning of the presentation of modern and contemporary art by creating eighty thousand square feet of galleries and public space, which will be named the Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing. The Met has intended to renovate the Modern Wing for more than a decade, and Max Hollein, who was appointed the Marina Kellen French Director of the museum in 2018, has conducted a comprehensive review of planning for the modern and contemporary art galleries. The newly revised plan reflects the museum’s updated curatorial direction, which embraces interdisciplinary work among its seventeen curatorial departments.

Tang has served on the museum’s board for nearly thirty years, including as a longtime chair of the Asian Art Visiting Committee, and Hsu-Tang, a member of the Modern and Contemporary Visiting Committee. Activist collectors who endeavor to safeguard art as cultural heritage, they have made gifts and pledges of art and supported acquisitions, special exhibitions, general operating needs, and galleries.

“As a young boy I was displaced by war, and America gave me refuge and the education and opportunities to succeed,” said Tang, who was born in Shanghai; was sent to the United States for schooling at age 11 after his family fled to Hong Kong during the Communist revolution in 1948; attended Phillips Academy Andover, Yale College, and Harvard Business School; and co-founded the asset management firm Reich & Tang in 1970. “I joined the Met’s board almost thirty years ago and I wanted to share the richness of my Chinese heritage with America and the world.”

“Having witnessed the turbulent times that many continue to endure, we find the Metropolitan Museum of Art to be an exemplary guardian and presenter of artistic heritages across cultures and time,” the couple said in a statement. “Contemporary art transcends entrenched notions of borders and identities and documents histories of the present. As Americans of Chinese heritage, we are honored to bestow this gift to galvanize progress — for the Met, for New York, and for the country to which we belong.”

(Photo credit: Charles Parker via Pexels)