RM Presents His Art Collection for the First Time at SFMOMA

RM has turned his long-running love of art into his biggest project of this kind yet. At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, he unveiled the exhibition “RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me,” where the public will be able to see a large part of his private art collection for the first time.

RM took part in a press preview of the exhibition on September 29 and admitted he was nervous about his first experience as a curator. The idea for the collaboration came up two years ago, while he was still doing his military service, when SFMOMA reached out to him with a proposal for a joint project.

The exhibition includes 178 works, 142 of them from RM's private collection and 36 from SFMOMA's own collection. Among them are pieces by major Korean artists such as Yun Hyong-keun, Kim Whanki, and Chang Ucchin, as well as works by Mark Rothko, Agnes Martin, Henri Matisse, and other international artists.

RM didn't just lend out his collection. He took part in selecting and arranging the works, wrote the texts accompanying the exhibition, recorded an audio guide in both Korean and English, and chose the music played in the galleries.

He described the exhibition as a kind of long introduction of himself, since he believes a collection someone builds over the years can reveal a lot about the person who put it together. Korean modern and contemporary art holds a special place in it, something RM has spent years trying to bring to a wider audience.

SFMOMA director Christopher Bedford noted that this is the largest exhibition of Korean art in more than 90 years of the museum's history. It also marks the first time RM has presented his private collection in a museum, and his first project as a curator.

“RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me” opens on October 3, and will be on view in San Francisco through February 7, 2027.

For RM, who over the years has turned visits to galleries and museums into a recognizable part of his life outside music, this is a fairly big step. Instead of simply showing what he's collected over the years, he's now showing the public, for the first time, how he himself looks at the art he's chosen.