Two years ago, RM of the wildly popular K-pop boyband BTS was serving as a soldier in the South Korean military when he received an offer from América Castillo, a museum curator in San Francisco: would he consider an exhibition of his private art collection?

“I loved it,” said RM (real name: Kim Namjoon) at the media preview of RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me, a new exhibition that opened in San Francisco earlier this month and is co-curated by SFMOMA’s Castillo and Hyoeun Kim. “There aren’t many things that show a person more honestly than a collection they’ve built over a long period of time.”

The result is a multi-dimensional exhibition of 142 works of RM’s private collection of mostly Korean works, including paintings, calligraphy, sculpture and even a Pokémon animation cel, in conversation with 36 of the museum’s pieces. The show has been a blockbuster success, with over 66,000 tickets sold and advance sales that were six times higher than any previous exhibition at the museum.

RM has been an evangelist for modern Korean art: a song from his 2022 solo album Indigo samples a conversational snippet from the Korean painter Yun Hyong-keun. At the SFMOMA show, Yun’s monochrome Umber-Blue sits juxtaposed next to Mark Rothko’s No. 24 in the show. There’s also an audio guide and playlist by RM.

“I’ve always dreamed of seeing different places, times, boundaries and backgrounds all mixed together in harmony,” RM said at the preview, before adding lightly: “It could be a mess – I never formally studied art history, and I’m not a curator.

“Sometimes an outsider can bring in a new breeze,” he added.

While his celebrity looms large over the show, the collection and the curation of the show are formidable. In South Korea, gallery owners and art dealers who have met RM have told me their nickname for him is “bakhsa” (professor) owing to the depth of his knowledge. “It is especially meaningful to bring the depth and richness of his collection to a wider audience,” says Kim, assistant curator of painting and sculpture.

Some of the art is displayed with a scholarly arc, while other curation feels more intuitive. One room is titled “I Don’t Know, But I Like It.”

“I started this with an innocent heart,” RM said at the preview. “I just didn’t know that this innocence would eventually make me write, erase and rewrite hundreds of labels.” His text that accompanies the pieces combines historical context with diaristic personal reflections, in a break from museum convention.

In a placard that accompanies a Lee Ungno painting of the Gwangju uprising in 1980, a brutal crackdown on protesters by a military dictatorship, RM writes: “He painted these crowds until the day he died. Strange, isn’t it. These people are not falling. Arms raised, legs wide, they are dancing.”

Last year, as US museums grappled with the lingering effects of the pandemic on attendance, funding challenges under the current administration and lower tourism rates in many cities, SFMOMA laid off 7.5% of its workforce amid a $5m deficit. Its new director Christopher Bedford wrote that the museum would adjust its programming and budget to reflect “a reduced annual attendance normal in the range of 600,000 visitors”.

Since the RM show opened, the museum has seen an undeniable financial boost. Its success, and whether it ushers in a direction toward celebrity exhibitions, is something officials and other museums seem to already be considering. In 2024, Brooklyn Museum staged a major exhibition showcasing the private collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys, while other recent shows have focused on art made by musicians like Jack White and Paul McCartney.

Yet the dedication of BTS fans, who call themselves Army, may prove to make this show a one-off. On the day of the media preview and opening reception, a couple hundred fans lined up outside the museum entrance, one holding a sign saying she came from London for RM. Another handed journalists small bags of gifts including custom-made bookmarks, key chains and cake pops along with thank you notes for covering the exhibition.

Exhibition merch available at the SFMOMA Museum Store and web store sold out within three hours. “It’s different in so many ways,” store director Shane Salvata says of the exhibition, adding that it is important for visitors to commemorate “how special it is that he curated this show”.

“It’s unlike anything we’ve ever experienced, and probably will experience ever again,” he says.

For Castillo, who originally conceived the show, success has a different measure. “To actually see it in the galleries … people are crying in front of you,” she says. “You’re never going to expect that. It’s a beautiful surprise.”