A look at the “RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me” exhibition in San Francisco on Sept. 29, 2026.

One of the most famous men on Earth was in the military when he got an offer from someone around 5,000 miles away in San Francisco. 

Kim Namjoon, who is better known by his stage name, RM, is the leader of K-pop pioneers BTS. But from December 2023 until June 2025, he was just another soldier in the South Korea military. Conscription is mandatory for all male South Korean citizens, and even celebrities like RM must pause their careers to fulfill their national duty.

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It was an uneasy time for RM, whose high-flying life consisted of making music, touring and exploring museums around the world. So when someone from SFMOMA, San Francisco’s premier modern art museum, reached out with an offer to curate an exhibition with his personal collection, he jumped at the chance.

“Of course, since I was in the military at that time, maybe I would have been happy with any kind of proposal coming from San Francisco,” he joked at Tuesday’s media preview in San Francisco. 

A portrait of Kim Namjoon, better known as RM of BTS.

The 32-year-old musician is one of Korea’s most famous art patrons. He’s an avid collector, and glimpses of his home look more like a museum than a celebrity heartthrob’s bachelor pad. Over the course of the last two years, SFMOMA curators América Castillo and Hyoeun Kim worked with RM, going through his entire collection and finding complementary pieces in SFMOMA’s catalogue. The result, “RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me,” opens to the general public........

© SFGate