Who are Chinese-American couple that gave the Met US$125 million? Financier Oscar Tang, son of Hong Kong’s ‘Textile Tycoon’ and a relative of Henry Tang, and his archaeologist wife

Retired New York financier Oscar Tang is the son of Hong Kong’s ‘Textile Tycoon’, Tang Ping-yuan, and related to Henry Tang, former No 2 in the city government

Oscar Tang’s wife, Agnes Hsu-Tang, is a prominent archaeologist. Their record donation will fund renovation of its modern and contemporary art galleries

Reading Time:2 minutes

Agnes Hsu-Tang and Oscar Tang attend the New York Philharmonic’s opening gala concert in 2016. Big supporters of the orchestra and the arts, they have given the Metropolitan Museum a record US$125 million donation. Tang’s father was a Hong Kong textile magnate, Tang Ping-yuan. Photo: Sylvain Gaboury/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

Published: 5:14pm, 1 Dec 2021Updated: 6:22pm, 1 Dec 2021

A Chinese-American couple have donated a record US$125 million to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to renovate the space that houses its collection of modern and contemporary art.

The donation by Oscar Tang, son of Hong Kong’s late “Textile Tycoon” Tang Ping-yuan, and his wife, archaeologist Agnes Hsu-Tang, is the largest capital gift the Met – one of New York’s biggest tourist attractions – has received in its 151-year history.

In return, the newly renovated space will bear their names, the museum said.

Oscar Tang, 83, a retired New York financier, has a long family association with Hong Kong. His father was among a large group of wealthy industrialists who moved to the then British colony from the Shanghai region just before the Communists took power in China in 1949.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will use the Tangs’ donation to renovate its modern and contemporary art galleries. Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

Tang senior, who founded South Sea Textile Manufacturing in Hong Kong in the 1950s, was a member of the colony’s Legislative Council for many years. Oscar Tang’s brother, Jack Tang Chi-chien, who died in 2014, was the first Chinese chairman of the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce and one of the founders of Asia Society Hong Kong Centre.

The family is related to that of Henry Tang Ying-yen, a former chief secretary, the No 2 position, in Hong Kong’s post-colonial administration. His father, Tang Hsiang-chien, moved the family textile business from Wuxi, near Shanghai, to Hong Kong in the late 1940s and founded Peninsula Knitters. Tang Hsiang-chien’s father was a cousin of Oscar Tang’s father.