Learn Italian: Tutta la collezione è stata donata al museo. - The whole collection was donated to the museum.

This sentence uses the passive voice in a compound tense (the passato prossimo). To form it, you use the passato prossimo of the auxiliary verb essere (è stata) followed by the past participle of the main action verb (donata).

Why do both stata and donata end in -a?

In the passive voice, every past participle must agree in gender and number with the subject of the sentence. Because the subject la collezione (the collection) is feminine singular, both the auxiliary participle stata and the main verb participle donata take the feminine singular -a ending.

Could I just say Tutta collezione instead of Tutta la collezione?

No, in Italian, when you use a form of tutto to mean 'the whole' or 'all of', you must include the definite article before the noun. It translates literally as 'all the collection'.

Why use al instead of just a before museo?