BTS Rapper RM Opens Private Art Collection to the Public in Major SFMOMA Exhibition
The BTS frontman selected 142 pieces from his private collection spanning 1,500 years to co-curate his first formal museum exhibition in San Francisco.
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is opening its galleries to 142 works from the personal art collection of BTS frontman RM, marking the first formal museum exhibition curated by a member of the South Korean group. The show, titled “RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me,” pairs pieces the musician has acquired over nearly a decade with 36 works drawn from the museum’s permanent holdings.
The exhibition spans roughly 1,500 years of art history. Pieces range from sixth-century Korean artifacts and 17th-century Joseon Dynasty paintings, including a work by Lee Won-chan, to contemporary acquisitions by artists such as Wonwoo Lee. Western modernists also feature heavily, with Philip Guston’s 1969 painting “Untitled (Red and Black Book)” and Roni Horn’s glass cylinder sculptures among the displayed objects.
RM, whose legal name is Kim Namjoon, built the collection without formal academic training in art history. He began acquiring works seriously around 2018, a period when BTS was rapidly expanding its global footprint and he started spending extended time outside South Korea. Collecting became a mechanism for navigating that displacement. He described feeling as though he is constantly drifting whether he is in Seoul or the United States, noting that he leaned heavily on art to manage that instability.
SFMOMA approached him two years ago while he was preparing to fulfill South Korea’s mandatory military service requirement. Under the country’s conscription laws, all able-bodied men must serve, but the government grants cultural exemptions or deferrals to individuals recognized for elevating national prestige internationally. RM completed his service and returned to civilian life before the exhibition took final shape.
To build the show, RM worked alongside SFMOMA project manager América Castillo and assistant curator Hyoeun Kim. They narrowed an initial list of approximately 500 potential museum-owned works down to 36 selections designed to contextualize RM’s private acquisitions. Mark Rothko’s 1960 painting “No. 14,” the only Rothko held by SFMOMA, anchors one of the final rooms. It hangs next to an untitled late-1980s piece by Korean abstract painter Yun Hyong-keun.
Yun holds specific significance for RM’s broader creative output. The cover of RM’s 2022 debut solo album, “Indigo,” reproduces Yun’s 1972 painting “Blue.” The album’s lead single, “Yun,” features Erykah Badu and opens with archival audio recordings of the artist, who died in 2007. In the exhibition pamphlet, RM draws a direct aesthetic distinction between the two painters featured in the gallery: he describes Rothko’s darkness as something that opens outward, while characterizing Yun’s darkness as what remains after enduring everything possible.
The presentation relies heavily on RM’s own handwriting rather than standard institutional typography. The title appears scrawled on a large white wall at the entrance. Floor inscriptions in English and Korean ask visitors to process the work visually and emotionally. Wall text for each piece includes QR codes linking to audio narration recorded by RM in both languages. Guests receive a zine-style pamphlet mapping the eight thematic sections.
Those sections reflect distinct curatorial impulses. “Blue Water” focuses on Kim Whanki, a mid-century Korean abstract painter whom RM has cited as the first artist he deeply studied. Another room, titled “i don’t know..but i like it,” groups eclectic acquisitions that defy a singular aesthetic framework. The closing section, “Umber,” references the Korean word “Dasaek,” denoting the color of harvested rice fields, and centers on Yun Hyong-keun.
This level of direct involvement differs from RM’s previous institutional collaborations. In 2023, he provided guided audio narration for “The Space Between: The Modern in Korean Art” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, but did not select or arrange the works. Three years prior to the SFMOMA project, he staged an anonymous exhibition in South Korea, keeping his identity hidden from attendees.
His public engagement with visual art has generated its own vocabulary among the BTS fanbase, known collectively as ARMY. Fans coined the term “namjooning” to describe the act of visiting museums, cycling through cities, or spending time outdoors in emulation of his documented hobbies. Outside SFMOMA ahead of the press preview, fans gathered hoping to see him arrive, distributing small gifts to journalists covering the event.
Celebrity art collections rarely enter public museum spaces with this degree of curatorial control. While actors and musicians frequently lend pieces to institutions or sit on museum boards, a major American fine arts museum ceding spatial arrangement, textual interpretation, and thematic framing to a pop musician represents a departure from standard curatorial practice. SFMOMA’s decision reflects a broader institutional push to attract younger demographics accustomed to parasocial relationships with entertainers, converting that digital engagement into physical museum attendance.
RM departed San Francisco immediately following the preview to travel to Bogotá, Colombia, where BTS is scheduled to perform on the Latin American leg of their ARIRANG stadium world tour. The exhibition opens to the general public on Oct. 3 and remains on view through Feb. 7, 2027.
