The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced on Tuesday 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.
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This unprecedented cash donation is the work of Oscar Tang and his wife Agnes Hsu-Tang, an American couple of Chinese descent. Mr. 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.
The Met has been looking to renovate modern and contemporary galleries for more than a decade, the museum said.
“Thanks to this remarkable gift, Oscar and Agnes allow the Met to accomplish its ambitious mission for generations to come,” said Daniel Weiss, president of this famous Manhattan museum, located near Central Park, in the statement.
Mr. Tang is an 83-year-old financier, 30-year Met donor and administrator, and has previously funded exhibitions, acquisitions and renovations to the museum.
Donations and philanthropy are at the heart of the funding of many institutions, especially cultural and scientific ones in the United States and in particular in New York.
The Tang couple’s donation “constitutes the most important philanthropic gift to the museum,” said the Met.
According to biographical information provided by the museum, Ms. Tang is an archaeologist and art historian, descendant of the Ming Dynasty (16th century), who was a cultural advisor to President Barack Obama and to Unesco.
Mr. 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 and he studied at the prestigious universities of Yale and Harvard, before making his fortune in New York and being the first American of Asian origin to join the Met’s board of directors.