K-pop star RM shows off his collection of Korean art at SFMoMA

"I guess this exhibition is a pretty long introduction of myself," said RM (of the K-pop boy band BTS) at last week’s press preview for the exhibition RM x SFMoMA: Between You and Me at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA).

For millions of fans worldwide, RM needs no introduction. BTS is one of the most famous music groups today. Earlier this year, they sold out the North American and European dates for their Arirang World Tour within hours. In July, they co-headlined the first-ever halftime show at the Fifa World Cup final with Madonna and Shakira.

SFMoMA now appears to have a blockbuster on its hands. Today (7 October), the museum revealed that membership previews were fully booked and tickets for the show's opening weekend had sold out. A total of 50,000 ticket reservations for the exhibition have already been made.

In the past few years, RM (real name Kim Namjoon) has become known as a serious art lover and patron. It began serendipitously in 2018, when he dropped by the Art Institute of Chicago while on tour with his band. He was struck by the art there, and he asked himself why he could not name any Korean artists.

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Over the past eight years, RM has spent many spare moments exploring art through books, galleries, museums and fairs. He also became a collector, mainly of modern and contemporary Korean art. A few years ago, when RM was featured in a short video giving a tour of his posh Seoul home, he strolled through rooms filled with art and books—so many that some were propped up on the floor and leaning against a wall.

The SFMoMA curator América Castillo contacted RM about presenting an exhibition of his collection. He agreed, and together with the museum choose 178 works—most from his own collection, plus 36 from SFMoMA’s. In choosing the pieces, RM says he asked himself two questions. "One was: does it move me, really?" he said during the preview. "Another was: right now in 2026, does this artist and does this work still have something to tell us?"

RM has not formally studied art history, but he believed that could be an advantage. "Sometimes, an outsider can bring a new breeze," he said. 

The exhibition unfolds in eight sections. "We wanted the structure to emerge from RM’s own relationship with the works," Hyoeun Kim, the other SFMoMA curator who worked on the show, tells The Art Newspaper.

Through a series of conversations with RM, the curators distilled "certain interests, emotions and relationships that kept recurring, and these gradually developed into the exhibition’s eight sections," Kim says. "Rather than fixed categories, the sections offer different ways of looking at the collection. The exhibition begins close to everyday life, gradually moves more deeply into human experience and ends in a quieter, more contemplative space."

"Korean modern and contemporary art is at the heart of RM’s collection, but it is not limited to a particular period or geography," Kim adds. "His collection also includes works by artists from the United States, Europe and other parts of Asia." The Korean art covers centuries. "In this exhibition alone, Korean art spans nearly 1,500 years,” she says, “from a sixth-century earthenware figurine and works from the Joseon dynasty to major figures of Korean modern and contemporary art."

The non-Korean artists represented include Giorgio Morandi and Roni Horn. (RM famously bought a Horn sculpture in 2021 for $1.2m, on view here.)

RM also helped write wall text and labels. The introductory texts are in handwritten Korean, paired with English translations, and convey his thinking about each section in a whimsical but succinct style. The sections have names like "Flowers bloom bloom at every boundary", "Friendscape" and "Home".

The section "Photo Buddha (A)" features Nam June Paik's ink sketch of his famous TV Buddha (1978) assemblage, a seated Buddha sculpture facing itself via a live feed on a television monitor. Here, the sketch is accompanied by Paik’s later, miniaturised version of the work—Enlightenment Compressed (1994), from RM's collection.

"Nam June Paik’s TV Buddha flips ‘seeing’ and ‘being seen’,” RM writes in the wall text, "while Kwon Jinkyu’s Buddha silently watches us in return. The moment the shutter clicks, the Buddha might just be contemplating you. I wanted to leave behind that brief moment of smiling, pausing and thinking again."

There are a lot of cross-pollinating themes and ideas in the show. SFMoMA has been collecting contemporary Korean art for decades, and this exhibition includes works from its holdings by Paik as well as a painting by the pioneering abstractionist Kim Whanki—one of RM’s favourites. Both artists were born in Korea under Japanese rule, studied in Japan and pursued their careers in the US.

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Kim says that it was important to bring RM’s collection into dialogue with SFMoMA’s, "looking for shared questions and unexpected connections across cultures and generations. For example, Chung Sanghwa and Agnes Martin connect through repetition and time, To Sang-bong and Giorgio Morandi through their attention to everyday objects, and Yoo Youngkuk and Milton Avery through their different approaches to abstracting nature."

For RM, the show is not just a vanity project. He often says that he wants to help others appreciate the Korean art he loves. "Over the past century, Korea went through colonisation, war and an incredibly fast development," he said during the exhibition preview. "A lot disappeared during that time, but at the same time, some remarkable and shiny things were also created. As a young man from Korea, I've collected with the hope that I could add a slightly newer, younger, maybe better perspective and sensibility. And eventually, that led me to this exhibition."

• RM x SFMoMA: Between You and Me, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, until 7 February 2027