Renowned throughout the world for its encyclopedic and universal collections, the Met is beginning major reconfiguration work to showcase its modern and contemporary works. The Lila Acheson Wallace wing is transformed into the “Tang wing”, renamed in homage to the couple of donors who made the project a reality.
In May 2024, the Met announced that it had already raised $550 million in private donations. This sum has now reached $670 million (approximately €585 million), enough to cover the entire construction cost as well as a significant part of the allocation intended for the operation of the new wing. Designed by Mexican architect Frida Escobedo, the redevelopment should make it possible to increase by half the exhibition space for modern and contemporary works of art, without expanding the original building.
While new acquisitions will enter the collections from the 20th and 21st centuries, the main objective of the project aims to strengthen, thanks to a renewed scenography, the dialogue between eras, by weaving links between works spanning more than 5 millennia of history. Following the wishes expressed by donors, the Met also intends to give more space to modern and contemporary Asian art.
Developed as a continuation of the seven buildings designed by Irish-American architect Kevin Roche between the 1970s and 1990s, the architecture of the future Tang wing will be no less spectacular. A facade punctuated by a limestone mesh and large glass surfaces will open onto more than 1,700 m2 of terraces, oriented towards Central Park, and the 5th floor will host a café.
The inauguration of the construction phase realizes a long-standing ambition. As early as 2014, the Met expressed its intention to renovate and expand the modern and contemporary art galleries, but the estimated cost in 2017 (600 million dollars) forced the teams to postpone it, favoring the conduct of more urgent maintenance work in the loss-making museum. In 2021, a colossal donation from the couple Oscar Tang and Agnes Hsu-Tang changed the situation: 125 million were offered to the institution, the largest private donation in its history.
To prevent the works from the former Wallace wing from gathering dust until 2030, the museum is presenting a selection of them in the exhibition “The Face of Life: Modern Portraits at The Met”, scheduled until 2029. There are 80 works by the great names of the 20th century – Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Alice Neel, Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington, etc. The exhibition is also an opportunity for the museum to present some recent acquisitions by Wilfredo Lam, Francis Picabia and Laura Wheeler Waring. Temporary modern and contemporary art installations will also appear throughout the museum, and temporary exhibitions and performances will be organized through the “Met Live Arts” program.
