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.

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.

Hsu-Tang is a respected academic and international cultural heritage policy adviser who is probably best known for presenting a number of television documentaries on Chinese historical sites and artefacts. She was managing director of the Metropolitan Opera until this summer.

The Met says the injection of funds will allow the museum to carry out a long-postponed project offering a multidisciplinary “re-envisioning” of 80,000 square feet (7,400 square metres) of galleries and public space that house its collection of modern and contemporary art.

“The Modern Wing will encompass a full renovation of the current modern and contemporary galleries, which The Met has been seeking to renovate for more than a decade,” the museum said.

“With this remarkable gift, Oscar and Agnes are enabling The Met to realise its ambitious mission for future generations,” said Daniel Weiss, president of the museum located next to Central Park.

Tang has acted as a trustee for the Met for three decades and has financed previous exhibitions, art acquisitions, room extensions and other expenses over the years.

He has also donated works of art, including 20 Chinese paintings from the 11th to 18th centuries and the 10th century Song dynasty masterpiece Riverbank, the museum said.

Tang and his wife have also been strong supporters of the New York Philharmonic, whose music director, Jaap van Zweden, performs the same role with the Hong Kong Philharmonic. Tang is co-chairman of the New York Phil.The couple have been active in another cause – helping to combat a wave of hate unleashed against Asian-Americans. In April 2021 they and a friend, art administrator Li-En Chong, launched a campaign to distribute yellow whistles which members of the community can use to alert others if attacked.

“A whistle is loud, we are staking our ground and are loud on racists, in a legal, safe, responsible way,” Hsu-Tang told the Post. Oscar Tang said: “This has always been an issue for Asian-Americans, always looked upon as perpetual foreigners. And I don’t feel like a foreigner, I feel very American.”

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