BTS star RM turns curator as 50,000 reserve tickets for SFMOMA show
50,000 ticket reservations have been made for a pop star's first turn as a museum curator.
As of 7 October 2026, that is the tally for 'RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me', The Art Newspaper reported. The show is the curatorial debut of RM, whose real name is Kim Namjoon and who is a member of K-pop group BTS. A curatorial debut means a first credit for choosing the works and shaping how they hang together.
The venue is the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, usually shortened to SFMOMA. The museum organised the exhibition with RM. It opened on 3 October.
Early dates have filled fast. Membership previews, early viewings set aside for museum members, are fully booked. Tickets for the opening weekend have sold out.
The show is compact but broad. It brings together 178 works across eight sections. Most come from RM's personal collection, with 36 drawn from the museum's own holdings. He developed the selection with SFMOMA curators América Castillo and Hyoeun Kim.
The centre is modern and contemporary Korean art, work made from the mid-20th century to the present. RM collects mainly in that field. He has been collecting for almost a decade, according to SFMOMA.
The checklist includes artists such as Yun Hyong-keun, Park Rehyun and Chang Ucchin. For readers new to those names, they sit in different generations of Korean painting, from spare abstraction to intimate scenes of daily life. The museum has not presented the show as a survey. It is framed as one collector's view.
Visitors can hear that view in RM's own words. SFMOMA has produced an audio guide in which he reflects on the themes of each gallery, everyday beauty and questions of human existence. An audio guide is recorded commentary you listen to as you walk, usually on a phone or handset.
For fans, this means a different kind of access. No stage. No setlist. Just the works RM has lived with, and his account of why he kept looking at them.
