English
A K-pop superstar has co-curated a major museum exhibition, and the results are more serious than many expected. “RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me” opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art last month, and it has already sold more than 66,000 tickets. Advance sales ran six times higher than any previous SFMOMA exhibition, and merchandise sold out within hours. Yet despite the record numbers, art critics largely ignored it. Everyone counted the crowds. Few looked at the walls.
A Collector With a Story
RM, born Kim Namjoon, is the leader of global K-pop group BTS. His interest in art began seriously after a 2018 visit to the Art Institute of Chicago, where he realized how little he knew about Korean artists. He began collecting, visiting museums, and sharing those experiences through vlogs and social media. His posts inspired fans worldwide to follow what became known as “RM Tours.” Now, working alongside SFMOMA curators América Castillo and Hyoeun Kim, he has brought together nearly 180 works from his personal collection and the museum’s holdings. The works fill eight rooms organized around themes of color, home, friends, and people.
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The exhibition opens strongly. The first gallery, “Bluewater,” centers on Kim Whanki’s 1970 field of tiny blue dots, donated to SFMOMA by the artist’s widow. Around it, blue takes many forms. Yves Klein’s saturated pigment, Kim Tschang-yeul’s water drops, Tony Feher’s plastic bottles, and Roni Horn’s thick glass all share the space. Color is a loose curatorial thread, but it works. In his audio guide, RM reflects on how a painting by a Korean artist who died in New York could connect him, the museum, and strangers from across the world.
Personal Voice, Public Space
RM’s presence runs throughout the show. Handwritten Korean wall texts, polite “please do not touch” signs, and an audio guide full of laughter and honest reflection all carry his voice. One gallery is titled simply, “I Don’t Know But I Like It.” That title is either the show’s weakness or its manifesto. It is probably both.
The “Home” gallery resembles a living room, with worn wooden furniture, shelves of ceramics, small paintings, and a suspended light. Chang Ucchin and Park Soo Keun share wall space with Giorgio Morandi. Then comes Son Sangki’s Artificial City–Irony (1987), a painted interior that mirrors the room around it. Son, who lived with a disability and endured significant hardship, often depicted Seoul neighborhoods facing redevelopment. His canvas now hangs inside a space much like the one it depicts. “Am I being a boring rich person?” RM asks in the audio guide. “It makes me really uncomfortable, and I like it.” The room’s comfort quietly becomes its own critique.
Art With Weight
The “Passion” gallery deepens that discomfort. Park Rehyun painted after her children slept, while also helping her deaf husband communicate with others. Rhee Seundja left three sons in wartime Korea to pursue painting in Paris, imagining each brushstroke as a spoonful of rice for her children. Biography risks reducing complex practices to inspirational stories. However, curators told reporters that more than 700 post-visit comments were submitted to the museum’s digital mural, and that some visitors cried.
The exhibition ends in the final room with Yun Hyong-keun’s dark vertical bands beside a Rothko. Yun survived war, imprisonment, and the threat of execution. His paintings carry that history. RM admits he cannot fully understand what those dark marks contain. After the geese and the selfies, it is an unexpectedly grave farewell. It also proves that a fan’s personal taste can do genuine critical work.
A Broader Cultural Moment
The timing is notable. The show opened days after Ha Chong-Hyun’s retrospective at the Asian Art Museum and a week before Haegue Yang’s Dia Beacon commission. Korean art’s current visibility rests on decades of scholarship, institutional effort, and significant corporate and government support. RM brings something none of that could guarantee: an audience already willing to follow him into a museum.
Star-driven exhibitions should not become a museum habit. A collector’s personal taste is no substitute for art history. However, the familiar objection that fame eclipses the art misses what actually works here. RM is not standing in front of the paintings. He is pointing at them. His voice brings visitors close enough to form their own attachments. Sometimes that is exactly where looking begins.
