The K-pop superstar’s first museum show, “Between You and Me,” pairs 142 works from his collection with the museum’s own masterpieces

NEED TO KNOW

• RM of BTS co-curated a new exhibition opening Oct. 3 at SFMOMA, Between You and Me
• The show pairs 142 pieces from RM’s personal art collection with 36 works belonging to the museum, bridging cultures, mediums and periods
• The musician introduced the exhibition during a press preview on Tuesday, Sept. 29 in San Francisco and shared his inspiration for its creation

“This is my debut as a co-curator and I’m nervous,” RM of BTS admits while introducing his latest project. “I think I revised this speech about 10 times.”

The leader of the superstar K-pop group is used to performing for sold-out stadiums of 70,000 screaming fans, but on Tuesday, Sept. 29, he welcomed a handful of journalists to be the first to walk through RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me, an exhibition of his personal art collection opening at the San Francisco institution on Saturday, Oct. 3.

“Over the past few years, I’ve seen a lot of other people’s collections, and I came to think that there aren’t many things that show a person more honestly than a collection they’ve built over a long period of time, spending their money, their life, their effort and even giving the walls of their own home,” he explains. “I guess this exhibition is a pretty long introduction of myself. And I feel embarrassed kinda.”

RM (born Kim Namjoon) bounces between humility and pride, doubt about his own expertise and giddy excitement over what he and his co-curators, América Castillo and Hyoeun Kim, have created over the course of two years.

The show puts 142 pieces from the musician’s own collection on display alongside 36 works belonging to the museum to create a dialogue between, as RM, 32, puts it, “the personal and the universal, East and West, modern and contemporary.”

It pairs numerous Korean artists, whom he notes may still be “very unfamiliar outside Korea,” with icons of the Western art world that he admires, from Mark Rothko to Agnes Martin to Donald Judd. 

RM first received Castillo’s pitch to showcase his work while he was serving South Korea’s mandatory military service. “I loved it. Of course, since I was in the military at the time, maybe I would have been happy with any kind of proposal coming from San Francisco,” he jokes. 

Still, he dove into every detail: selecting works that told a story about himself and his country, committing to “write, erase, and rewrite hundreds of labels” that visitors will read as they pass through the exhibition, and recording a truly delightful audio guide that feels more like a voice note from a friend. It begins, “This exhibition is called RM x SFMOMA, but, you know, it’s about my personal things, so I prefer to be called as Namjoon. Or you could call me Joon, if it’s too long.”

The exhibition is split into eight spaces — Blue Water, Friendscape, Home, Photo Buddha, People, Passion, I Don’t Know Why But I Like It and Umber — each connected by visual themes or artistic practices across cultures, but also representing elements that feel incredibly personal and at times, vulnerable.

In Home, especially, the exhibition is designed to feel like visitors are stepping into the living room of RM’s Seoul apartment, down to the furniture. In Friendscape, a landscape painting that normally hangs in his bedroom is on display. And in People, there’s a work that he actually lifted from his parents’ house, with the promise to return it, of course.

The work of one of his favorite visual artists, the late Yun Hyong-keun (whose art fans may recognize from the cover of RM’s 2022 album Indigo), runs as a theme throughout, and marks the exhibition’s conclusion with a powerful meditative moment.

In his introduction to the exhibition on Tuesday, he shared, “I tried to bring together everything I had liked and everything I wished could have been better. I just tried to make this exhibition as interesting and as new as I possibly could. I hope you can feel it.”

RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me opens Oct. 3. Tickets are on sale now.

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