Construction Begins on the Met’s $670 Million Modern Art Wing

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has broken ground on its new modern and contemporary art wing. The 11,700 square metre (126,000 square foot) Oscar L Tang and HM Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing, scheduled to open to the public in 2030, will house the museum’s collection of 20th- and 21st-century art and will feature improvements in accessibility, infrastructure and sustainability. 

The groundbreaking ceremony, which marks the start of construction works, was witnessed by elected local and state officials, plus the museum’s leaders, donors and trustees, and celebrated with a cocktail party on the institution’s roof. 

The Met’s co-chairs of the board of trustees, Candace K. Beinecke and Hamilton E. James said the new wing will be “a spectacular setting”, while the museum’s director and chief executive said it would “transform how we present 20th- and 21st-century art”.

In November 2021, Oscar Tang and Agnes Hsu-Tang gave the Met the largest capital gift in the institution’s history, pledging $125 million to fund the renovation of the modern wing. In total, the Met has raised $670 million to cover the full cost of construction and “a significant portion” of the endowment for operating the new space. 

The Tangs are significant cultural philanthropists in New York City; Oscar Tang has been a trustee of the Met since 1994. In addition to their gift to the Met, the couple donated $40 million to the New York Philharmonic in 2023 and $20 million to the New York Historical—the city’s oldest museum—in 2024. 

The Tang Wing has been designed by Frida Escobedo, who in 2018 was the youngest architect to design the annual Serpentine Pavilion and who is also a co-designer for the renovation of the Pompidou Centre. The new wing will increase available exhibition space by almost 50 percent to 6,460 square metres (69,500 square feet), while remaining within the existing building’s footprint.

Escobedo’s design takes inspiration from the museum’s 156 years of architectural history. The five-storey wing will be lower than the Met’s Fifth Avenue façade and no higher than the 1880 building at the centre of the museum complex. It will feature a limestone celosia lattice screen, designed to respond to the movement of sunlight during the day. 

The Tangs said: “Frida’s exceptional design for the new wing thoughtfully captures the spirit of the museum’s important mission and will be a dynamic addition that is both timely and enduring to the Met and to New York City. We are delighted by the overwhelming enthusiasm from the public, the board, and private donors, who have joined us in supporting this significant and meaningful undertaking.”

Accessibility improvements will include new lifts, ramps and improved entry points from adjacent wings. The Tang Wing has been designed to reduce energy consumption, partially by maximising the use of natural light, which also improves the space’s ability to display artwork over the long term.