The Tangs, New Donor Royalty, Step Into the Spotlight

New York Times

27-01-2025

When the Metropolitan Museum of Art needed a major lead gift to jump-start its long-delayed new Modern and contemporary wing, they donated $125 million, and were given naming rights.
When the New York Philharmonic needed a meaningful contribution to endow its music and artistic director chair for the 2025-26 season, they ponied up $40 million — helping woo Gustavo Dudamel from Los Angeles — the largest endowment gift in the orchestra's history.
And when the New York Historical was trying to complete its new Wing for American Democracy, which was already under construction, the couple donated $20 million. It's now known as the Tang Wing for American Democracy, and is scheduled to open next year in time for the country's 250th anniversary.
Oscar L. Tang, 86, and his wife, Agnes Hsu‐Tang, 53, have kept a low profile in the past, though Tang was the first American of Asian descent to join the Met's board more than 30 years ago. But recently they have started giving more publicly and abundantly — with crucial gifts that have catapulted them into the center of New York cultural philanthropy, which remains dominated by white donors.
'Their giving is going to have a huge impact,' said Peter W. May, who serves with Tang as co-chair of the Philharmonic and with Hsu-Tang on the board of the New York Historical. 'New York has gone through a rough patch — clearly Covid knocked us all — and there was a big question of whether the cultural side of the city was going to survive.'
With their gift to the Met, the Tangs entered the pantheon of game-changing cultural donations of $100 million or more, joining the oil-and-gas billionaire David H. Koch, benefactor of New York City Ballet's renovated Lincoln Center home, in 2008; the private equity billionaire Stephen A. Schwarzman, for the New York Public Library, in 2008, and a new cultural center at Yale, in 2015; and the entertainment mogul David Geffen, whose 2015 gift went toward the gut renovation of the former Avery Fisher Hall.
The Tangs' increasing prominence seems due to several key capital projects simultaneously coming to fruition and the couple's effort to counter the anti-Asian discrimination and violence that escalated during the pandemic.
'We feel very much part of America, we're very grateful to be Americans,' said Oscar Tang in an interview with the pair at their elegant, art-filled apartment overlooking Central Park. 'The idea of giving back has always been very central, but to do it quietly.'
'During Covid, with anti-Asian hate, we realized that we should perhaps be a little bit more open about it,' he continued, 'that we can set an example, that we earned our right to be part of this society, that we are an integral part of this society.'
Indeed, the Tangs come from generations of serious collectors. Entering their spacious, serene living room feels like walking into a museum. A monumental Gandharan Buddha dating to the third century sits in front of a 19th-century painting by Pu Ru, the noted scholar-artist prince of the deposed Manchu Qing dynasty.
In the dining room is a set of ancient Chinese bronze bells from the Warring States period atop a 16th-century Ming dynasty cabinet. An entire dining room wall holds a 1989 abstract expressionist triptych by the Indigenous artist Fritz Scholder, recently shown at the Met.
A second triptych Hsu-Tang acquired long ago by the contemporary Navajo artist Emmi Whitehorse — whose work was shown at last year's Venice Biennale — anchors an adjacent guest room.
The two speak fondly and at length of their distinct journeys to the United States. Tang came from an industrialist family in textile manufacturing in Shanghai; his father, Ping-Yuan Tang, attended M.I.T. and later rebuilt the family business in Hong Kong, becoming one of the early financial and civic leaders in post-1949 Hong Kong, as well as a philanthropist dedicated to education.
Oscar was sent from Shanghai to the United States at age 11, after his family fled China for Hong Kong in 1949, during the Communist revolution. 'I would walk on the street with my mother, and all of a sudden, she would just tug me to be close to her because we were walking by a dead body — somebody who had died of exposure and hunger,' Tang said of his childhood in war-ravaged Shanghai.
Upon first arriving in the U.S., Tang lived in the boys dormitory of his older sister's school in St. Johnsbury, Vt. Out of a deep sense of debt to that small New England town, Tang would later support the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium there, where a new Tang Science Annex recently opened.
He went on to attend Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.; Yale University; and Harvard Business School. Now retired, Tang was a co‐founder of the asset management firm Reich & Tang in 1970 in New York. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, with the crackdown on pro-democracy protest, he teamed up with the architect I.M. Pei and the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, among others, to establish the Committee of 100, a Chinese American leadership organization for advancing U.S.-China dialogues and promoting the participation of Chinese Americans in America.
Hsu‐Tang, whose father is a scientist and mother a businesswoman, is descended from the 16th-century Ming dynasty imperial minister Xu Guangqi, a scholar and a collaborator of the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci, who converted to Christianity in 1603 and was beatified by the Vatican.
Born and raised in Taipei, she came to Washington, D.C., at age 14 and was educated in the United States and England. An archaeologist and art historian, Hsu‐Tang received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and formerly served as a Mellon Fellow at Cambridge and Stanford. She has advised UNESCO in Paris as well as the U.S. Cultural Property Advisory Committee under President Barack Obama. She is also the chairwoman of the board of the New York Historical and a former managing director on the Metropolitan Opera board.
The Tangs married in 2013. Tang was widowed from his first wife, with whom he has four children; his second marriage ended in divorce.
Tang's association with the Met dates back to the days of Douglas Dillon, the former Met executive who built up the museum's Asian wing. Dillon enlisted Tang's former brother-in-law, Wen Fong, a professor of Chinese art at Princeton University, as a consultant and later as chairman of the Asian art department.
Tang's gifts to the Met's Asian department include 20 important Chinese paintings from the 11th to the 18th century as well as the Song dynasty hanging scroll, 'Riverbank,' which ignited debate over its attribution. The Met's experts determined that it was by the 10th‐century artist Dong Yuan, convening a symposium to address the dispute. Today, the Met website says that scholarly consensus in its favor has 'grown stronger.'
The gift to the Met's new wing was the Tangs' idea and 'came totally out of the blue during Covid,' said Max Hollein, the museum's director, 'when we were really worried about whether this project would actually go forward.'
Before Hsu-Tang's involvement with New York Historical, Tang met Louise Mirrer, the museum's president and chief executive, who invited his input for the 2014 exhibition 'Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion' on the history of U.S.-China trade and immigration. Tang suggested that the show expand beyond the Chinese Exclusion Act.
'He showed that we had left out the story of the long history of relations between Chinese students and the United States and later arrivals like Oscar,' Mirrer said, adding that Tang ended up contributing artifacts like personal photographs as well as some financial support.
At New York Historical, Hsu-Tang was instrumental in developing the idea of devoting the new wing to democracy. 'Benjamin Franklin was introduced to the text of Confucius by Voltaire's writing, who was introduced by my great-great-great-great-grandfather,' she said. 'We are all historically connected.'
The Tangs' art collection focuses on Chinese art from the Bronze Age to 11th- and 19th-century literati paintings, along with abstract expressionist pieces by artists like Zhang Daqian, who in 2017 surpassed Picasso at auction.
Hsu‐Tang has been collecting and commissioning contemporary Indigenous works for more than a decade and loaned work to the New York Historical's recent exhibition featuring the contemporary Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick in conversation with the museum's 19th-century Hudson River School paintings.
For a museum to feature art owned by the chairwoman of that museum can raise ethical questions, given that the value of that art is enhanced by such an exhibition.
Speaking generally, Claire Bishop, an art history professor at the City University of New York's graduate center, said that museums often have a 'cozy relationship to the collecting class.' Trustees, she added, can 'lay on the pressure to show artists they collect,' although there was no indication Hsu‐Tang exerted any such pressure. Moreover, the Tangs were among several donors who in 2023 helped the museum acquire WalkingStick's work, 'Niagara.'
WalkingStick, in an interview, said the show 'started with Agnes thinking about the work that was in the New York Historical and my work,' adding that 'she had this vision of the interaction of my paintings with the Hudson River School artists.'
Hsu‐Tang said she only connected WalkingStick with the show's curator, Wendy Nalani E. Ikemoto, who asked Hsu‐Tang to be 'one of the lenders, and there were many.' She added that she had 'no involvement' in the content or financial support of the catalog 'so as to avoid any perception of self-interest.'
While several wealthy collectors treat their art as assets and have opened private museums, the Tangs said everything they own will be gifted to public institutions and that they have never sold any work.
"My father always spoke of these values — that paintings are not to be traded, that you own paintings for appreciation and not as a monetary asset,' Tang said. 'If you sell them for commercial purposes, that's a sign of decay.'
The Tangs are devoted fans of classical music and attend the New York Philharmonic's performances weekly (their gift established the Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Music and Artistic Director Chair). 'If you listen to a popular song, it grows old after a while,' Tang said, 'whereas the classical never does.'
The two also own a home in Vail, Colo., where they spend summers and have supported cultural institutions. Tang, who started skiing there in 1965, helped establish the Bravo! Vail summer music festival as well as the Vail Dance Festival.
'Oscar is kind of a founding figure in believing in a place,' said Damian Woetzel, the artistic director of Dance Festival and president of the Juilliard School. 'It allows for creativity.'
The Tangs think of their philanthropy itself as a form of creativity. 'We get to create things,' Hsu‐Tang said. 'Because we don't have children together, these projects are our children.'