On October 3, RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me opens at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, marking the first-ever museum exhibition featuring artworks from the personal collection of RM, leader of global pop phenomenon BTS. The exhibition brings together 200 works, 145 from his collection and 45 from SFMOMA’s holdings, exploring shared artistic concerns across geography, generation, and culture. Many of RM‘s pieces are by Korean artists never before exhibited publicly in the United States.
The scale is significant. The show occupies nearly an entire floor and represents something increasingly rare in institutional programming: a major museum extending genuine curatorial voice to someone whose primary platform exists outside the art world. Yet the exhibition’s premise isn’t novelty. It’s specificity. RM‘s collecting centers on pioneering Korean modernists—figures who worked through colonization, war, and dictatorship. artists whose work deserves placement alongside canonical Western abstraction, not sequestered within regional or historical categories.
Collection at Its Core
Among the Korean artists central to RM‘s vision are Yun Hyong-keun, Park Rehyun, Kwon Okyon, Kim Yun Shin, To Sangbong, and Chang Ucchin. Yun Hyong-keun anchors the presentation, more than a dozen works by the artist occupy a dedicated gallery. Known for alluring, introspective abstractions of dark, diluted paint on canvas and linen, Yun‘s practice carries visible weight: he was imprisoned multiple times on political grounds and nearly executed. His work embodies uncompromising artistic integrity across decades of upheaval.
Chang Ucchin (1917–1990) appears prominently, painting scenes of traditional Korean life with childlike sophistication and emotional clarity. Kim Yun Shin‘s conceptual investigations sit alongside works by Yoo Youngkuk, a pioneer of geometric abstraction whose explorations of color and form create unexpected dialogues with Western modernism.
ART ON DSCENE
The exhibition’s curatorial strategy is to find genuine visual and philosophical resonance rather than forced equivalence. Mark Rothko‘s meditative color fields hang with Yun Hyong-keun‘s blacks and earth tones. Yves Klein‘s sponge sculpture converses with works by Yoo Youngkuk. Agnes Martin, Henri Matisse, Georgia O’Keeffe, Paul Klee, and Giorgio Morandi appear throughout, creating a genuine network of artistic concerns rather than a hierarchical presentation of “Western art” with Korean works as supporting players.
Thematic Organization
The exhibition divides into thematic galleries. “Bluewater” centers on the color blue and representations of water, Yves Klein, Dan Flavin, Yoo Youngkuk‘s seascapes and forest studies. Another section, “Photobuddha,” features Nam June Paik‘s bronze Buddha watching itself on closed-circuit video, exploring technology and spiritual practice. One gallery deliberately mixes registers and registers of taste: Cy Twombly drawings (canonical abstraction) hang with street art, a Pokémon animation cell, and installations by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, an unusual but sincere mixture reflecting how contemporary collecting actually works.
Kim Whanki, represented by three canvases (two from RM‘s collection, one from SFMOMA), anchors conversations about abstraction and cultural specificity. Centuries-old Korean ceramics and calligraphy appear throughout, alongside contemporary work by Wonwoo Lee and others, refusing temporal or geographic separation.
A Statement of Purpose at RM x SFMOMA
RM has been explicit about what this exhibition represents and shared with media “We live in an age defined by boundaries. This exhibition at SFMOMA reflects those boundaries: between East and West, Korea and America, the modern and the contemporary, the personal and the universal. I don’t want to prescribe how these works should be seen; whether out of curiosity or study, all perspectives are welcome. My only hope is that this exhibition can be a small but sturdy bridge for many.”
The exhibition also signals institutional validation of a broader cultural shift. RM was recently named the first global ambassador for the National Museum of Korea, whose collections span more than 5,000 years. His curatorial work here, alongside SFMOMA curators América Castillo and Hyoeun Kim, demonstrates how collecting and curation can function as cultural diplomacy without compromising aesthetic rigor.
How To Visit RM x SFMOMA Exhibition?
General admission surcharge tickets are $10 weekdays, $12 weekends and holidays. The new Encore Pass ($75) grants unlimited exhibition visits through February 7 plus same-day access to SFMOMA’s full galleries and 10% off at the in-exhibition pop-up store. SFMOMA members and visitors 18 and under enter free (advance timed tickets required). Member previews run October 1–3.
General public tickets and the Encore Pass are now on sale. RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me runs October 3, 2026–February 7, 2027, at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 15 Third Street. More at sfmoma.org.
