BTS Star RM’s Korean Art Collection Draws Crowds to San Francisco Museum

Fans have been lining up outside the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art this month, and the attraction is not a famous painter but a pop star’s eye. RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me, an exhibition drawn from the private art collection of RM, the leader of the South Korean band BTS, has become one of the most successful shows in the museum’s history.

The exhibition, which opened October 3 and runs through February 7, has sold more than 66,000 tickets, The Guardian reported. The museum said in early October that advance sales were six times higher than for any previous exhibition before opening, and that its store had more than doubled its previous opening-day record for exhibition merchandise, according to Korea JoongAng Daily.

The show pairs works from RM’s collection with pieces from the museum’s own holdings, nearly 180 works in all, nearly 150 of them his. The collection is mostly modern and contemporary Korean art, including paintings, calligraphy, sculpture, ceramics and design, though some works date back to the fifth or sixth century, according to the museum. It is among the largest presentations of Korean modern and contemporary art assembled in the United States. In one gallery, paintings by the Korean artist Yun Hyong-keun share the walls with a Mark Rothko from the museum’s collection, according to The New York Times, as republished by The Star.

The idea began two years ago, when América Castillo, an SFMOMA project manager, approached RM while he was completing his military service in South Korea, according to The Guardian. She co-curated the show with Hyoeun Kim, the museum’s assistant curator of painting and sculpture. It is RM’s first partnership with a museum as a co-curator, and he wrote the wall texts and labels himself, mixing art history with personal reflections. One section is titled I Don’t Know, But I Like It.

At a media preview, RM, whose given name is Kim Namjoon, said a collection built over many years shows a person more honestly than almost anything else, The Guardian reported, and joked that the result could be a mess because he never formally studied art history and is not a curator. Dealers and gallery owners in South Korea, The Guardian reported, have nicknamed him the professor for the depth of his knowledge.

The museum says RM’s collection reflects personal resonance rather than market trends, with recurring themes of everyday beauty, nature and questions of human existence. Castillo has said she hopes the show brings in visitors who have not felt spoken to by traditional art history.

The success arrives at a useful moment for the museum. SFMOMA cut costs last year amid a $5 million deficit and said it expected annual attendance of around 600,000 visitors, as American museums contend with slower recovery from the pandemic, tighter funding and weaker tourism in some cities.

The show’s success has museums thinking about whether exhibitions built around famous figures are a direction worth pursuing, The Guardian reported, noting recent shows centered on the collections or art of musicians. The skeptical view is that celebrity can overshadow the art; The Guardian’s critic argued that here, while RM’s fame looms large, the collection and its curation are formidable on their own terms. The unusual devotion of BTS fans, who call themselves Army, may also make this show hard to repeat.