the Metropolitan Museum of Art de New York announced on November 30 that it had received a financial donation of $ 125 million, the largest in its history, which should enable it to complete an old renovation project.
This unprecedented cash donation is the work of Oscar Tang and his wife Agnes Hsu-Tang, an American couple of Chinese descent. Oscar Tang fled China in 1948 and found refuge in the United States at the age of 11 before making his fortune in finance.
The manna touched by the “Met”, will be used to renovate rooms of the great New York museum devoted to modern and contemporary art, according to a press release. The new spaces will be named after the Tang couple. This makes “more than ten years that the Met has sought to renovate modern and contemporary galleries”, the museum said.
“With this remarkable gift, Oscar and Agnes allow the Met to fulfill its ambitious mission for generations to come”, welcomed in the press release Daniel Weiss, president of this famous Manhattan museum, located near Central Park. Oscar Tang is an 83-year-old financier, 30-year Met donor and administrator, who has previously funded exhibitions, acquisitions and renovations to the museum.
Donations and philanthropy are at the heart of the funding of many institutions, particularly cultural and scientific, in the United States and in particular in New York. The donation of the Tang couple “constitutes the most important philanthropic gift to the museum”, welcomed the Met.
According to biographical information provided by the museum, Agnes Tang is an archaeologist and art historian, descendant of the Ming dynasty (16th century), who was cultural advisor to President Barack Obama and to Unesco.
Oscar Tang, “born in Shanghai, was sent to America at the age of 11 after his family fled China to Hong Kong during the Communist Revolution in 1948”. Part of his family had already been in the United States since the end of the 19th century. He studied at prestigious Yale and Harvard universities, before making his fortune in New York City and being the first Asian American to join the Met’s board of directors.
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