An unprecedented donation of $125 million to a museum

The Egyptian Pavilion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced Tuesday that it has received a donation of $125 million, the largest in its history, that would enable it to complete a renovation project launched more than a decade ago.

This unprecedented cash donation was made by Oscar Tang and his wife, Agnes Hsu-Tang, a Chinese-American couple.

Tang fled China in 1948 and sought refuge in the United States when he was eleven years old, before making his fortune by working in the finance sector.

The money obtained by the museum will be used to renovate the rooms of the New York Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, according to a statement.

The new spaces will be called the Tang couple.

The museum indicated that it had been seeking to renovate its modern and contemporary art galleries for more than a decade.

"With this wonderful gift, Oscar and Agnes have allowed the Met Museum to fulfill its ambitious mission for generations to come," Daniel Weiss, president of the museum, located in Manhattan near Central Park, said in the statement.

Tang, an 83-year-old financier, has also been a donor and museum official for 30 years, and has previously funded exhibitions, acquisitions and renovations at the museum.

According to the biography provided by the museum, Agnes Tang is an archaeologist and art historian, a Ming dynasty (16th century) who was a cultural advisor to former US President Barack Obama and UNESCO.

As for Oscar, he was "born in Shanghai and sent to America at the age of eleven after his family fled from China to Hong Kong during the communist revolution in 1948."

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