A tall work of calligraphy from the 19th century usually hangs in RM’s recording studio in Seoul, South Korea.
“One’s actions and conduct should be as upright and weighty as a thousand massive rocks,” its characters read. They’re the words of Chinese philosopher Shao Yong, from a thousand years ago, written in sturdy strokes by Korean scholar Kim Jeong-hui.
“One’s refinement and cultivation ...” it continues, “... should be like gold that has been tempered a hundred times.”
“People told me: Isn’t it too heavy for a studio?” RM, the leader of the K-pop group BTS, said in a video interview from South Korea in April.
“But I always get inspired by people in the past because it was really so hard to even just survive and just live a life at that time.”
That potent ink work is now on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in California, United States in an ambitious exhibition that pairs 45 works from its holdings with 145 from RM’s own art collection.
Most of RM’s pieces are by Korean artists, including many who lived through difficult times: Japan’s colonisation of the country in the first half of the 1900s, then the Korean War and decades of dictatorship.
RM began collecting after a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois in 2018, while on tour with BTS, he said. He was thrilled to see artists he knew from textbooks, and he had a startling realisation.
“It’s a shame on me,” he said. “I’m an artist from Korea, and I know Picasso, I know van Gogh. I don’t know anyone from my country.”
He told himself, “You have to find your root,” he said, “... and that’s how I started to look at the Korean artists. They just make me not get too lazy, not get too settled down.”
Over the previous couple of weeks, the 31-year-old had played concerts with BTS in Tokyo, Japan and Goyang, the Seoul satellite city where RM grew up. The next day, he would fly to Tampa, Florida, continuing a tour with more than 80 dates on five continents over 12 months.
In mid-July, the band had made news by saying it would not compete at the 2027 Grammy Awards, protesting the creation of an Asian pop performance category.
“We hope music can be heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided into region or language,” they said in a statement.
Amid all of this, RM, a name he picked to replace Rap Monster (he was born Kim Nam-joon), has been working on the museum exhibition, in which “two different worlds are coming together,” he said. “East or West, Modernism and K-pop, or Korea and America.”
The venture has no obvious parallel. Musician couple Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz showed some 100 pieces from their collection of Black art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York in 2024, and rapper Drake and basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal have curated modest affairs.
But the exhibition RM x SFMOMA: Between You And Me, which is set to run through Feb 7, 2027 will occupy almost an entire floor of the museum and feature canonical international artists alongside Korean figures who are rarely seen stateside, along with centuries-old ceramics, calligraphy and more.
“I just hope for it to be really personal,” said RM, “... because I think the best part about art is the expansion from something personal to something universal.”
SFMOMA sent RM a proposal that “was really serious”, he said, adding, “... and really they understood me – what I love and what I’ve been pursuing.” He has been thinking about opening his own exhibition space in Seoul, but he doesn’t want to rush that.
He replied with a handwritten letter that the show’s other two curators, America Castillo and Hyoeun Kim, said was moving to read because of his sincerity about wanting to introduce people to Korean art.
“He has a poeticness to writing that’s very beautiful,” said Castillo.
“As a Korean curator this project carries actually a special weight for me, because I really want to introduce great Korean art and Korean artists in the US,” said Kim, an SFMOMA assistant curator.
RM particularly admires Yun Hyong-keun (1928-2007), who made alluring and introspective abstractions, swaths of dark, diluted paint on linen or canvas. Imprisoned on multiple occasions on political grounds, “he was the type of guy who never bows down”, said RM.
“He also hated shortcuts.” RM’s 2022 solo album, Indigo, includes a track, Yun, that has a sample of the painter expounding on the importance of seeking truth.
More than a dozen Yuns that RM has collected will occupy one section.
“When you get to know his life and his narrative, the human, and the humanity and the painting itself, they just match so perfectly,” he said. “And the black he had – I just never get tired of it.”
Another gallery will include two more Yuns with a majestic Mark Rothko (from SFMOMA) that has its own meditative fields of colour, red-orange and blue.
“I just wanted to see the actual scene, just hanging together and what it maybe feels like, to me and for Americans,” said RM.
RM exudes a restless curiosity when he discusses art and his collecting, which is part of a larger mission for him.
“It’s a very important time for Korea because a lot of people, a lot of foreigners, are coming to Korea, and they’re getting to know what Korean culture is,” he said.
“They don’t ask me any more, Are you from South or North? And I really appreciate it.”
He has donated money to conserve Korean artefacts, and in June, he was named the first global ambassador for the National Museum of Korea, whose collection dates back more than 5,000 years. He seems likely to bring new audiences to SFMOMA (an incentive for the museum to do the show).
“Museums and the arts, they scare a lot of people, sometimes,” he said.
Even he has his issues. Though he’s an assiduous gallery-goer, “contemporary is always confusing and tricky” for him, he said. “Sometimes it really gives me a lot of headaches, because I have to study.”
And while galleries invite him to visit their artists, “I’m scared of disappointments,” he said.
“When you really love an artist, sometimes you just want to step far away and see the outside.”
Still, that desire to connect – to unite people through culture – runs through much that he does. He has said that he hopes that the SFMOMA show can be “a small but sturdy bridge for many.”
“I mean, if I have the right to be the bridge,” added RM.
“I have my fans, and I have the people who really love me, and who really seriously care for my likes and tastes. I’m really blessed to make an event like this. I’m just an art lover from the outside.” – ©2026 The New York Times Company
