SINGAPORE—The Chinese painter Wu Guanzhong has donated 113 artworks, worth an estimated S$66 million (U.S. $45 million), to the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), reports Channel NewsAsia. According to a joint statement by the National Heritage Board and the museum, Wu's gift is the largest donation that has been made to any museum in Singapore to date. 

SAM director Kian Chow Kwok said that the museum will exhibit Wu's works in early 2009. 

"Wu Guanzhong's art practice displays his serious consideration of both formalism and the social grounding of art," Kwok said. "This makes his work different from the Western value of 'art for art's sake,' where art becomes a dimension of existence separate from the reality of life." 

The 89-year-old Wu is a painter, art educator, and essayist who first gained recognition in the early 1980s. He donated a piece entitled Roots to Singapore back in 1988 and has said he gives his works to SAM because he "trusted the institution in the continued research and exhibitions of the works to make them relevant to the future."