The gift shop at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is expecting a huge rush over the next few months.
"This is hands down the most inventory that we've ever front-loaded for an exhibition," said the museum's director of retail, Shane Salvata.
The reason for the merch overdrive is K-pop band BTS — or, more specifically, its leader, RM. The popstar is showing art from his personal collection for the first time at a museum, and SFMOMA is packed with fans clamoring to see the works and buy souvenirs.
Among those there for RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me on the sold-out first day of previews are Bay Area twenty-somethings Joi Karra and Bre Walker.
The pair met each other a few months ago at one of the BTS-themed events Walker organizes locally. Karra similarly takes BTS fandom seriously. The college student has a side hustle making BTS-inspired pins and other accessories.
"I love art and museums," said Karra. "I've been to SFMOMA many times before."
"I am not an artsy person," Walker said. "This is my first time actually coming to an art museum. And it's all because of Nam-joon."
She's talking about Kim Nam-joon — RM's real name. (RM was once known as "Rap Monster," but has gone by the shorter version for almost a decade.)
BTS's global fanbase — collectively known as ARMY, an acronym for "Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth" — came up with a verb to describe the lifestyle associated with the K-pop star's interests: "Namjooning."
"Just doing all the things that Nam-joon loves doing as well," Karra said by way of definition.
Namjooning
Visiting museums and collecting art are key to Namjooning. RM began doing these things nearly a decade ago.
His passion for painting and sculpture inspired some of his songs, such as "Yun" (about the 20th century Korean abstract artist Yun Hyong-keun) and "Still Life" (inspired by seeing still life paintings by 19th century European masters in museums). His art collection focuses heavily on works by Korean artists, from ancient times to the present, including Yun, Kim Whanki and Chang Ucchin.
RM, who is 32, worked with two SFMOMA curators on RM x SFMOMA: Between You and Me. Most of the works on display are part of RM's collection, with a few additions from SFMOMA's collection — like a Mark Rothko painting, side-by-side with one by Yun.
At a press briefing ahead of the opening, RM said it was important to him to make sure the art on display resonated with today's audiences.
"There were two questions that mattered most to me," RM said. "One was, does it move me, really? And another was, right now in 2026, does this artist and does this work still have something to tell us?"
RM also described the exhibition as "a pretty long introduction" to himself. Fans like Walker and Karra, whose encyclopedic knowledge about RM goes far beyond the introductory phase, see it as a way to get deeper inside his head.
"I really just want to be a part of something that RM treasures, and find out why he treasures it," said Walker.
"I want to know why he chose certain pieces and what they mean to him," Karra said.
Deciphering RM through art
At the museum, Walker and Karra try to make sense of several large abstract paintings in a section of the show entirely dedicated to the yellow-brown color umber.
"He's got this obsession with umber and its relation to earth," Walker said. "He's a very 'nature' guy."
"And I think he likes abstract pieces because they can be interactive, like meditative," added Karra. "You can look at one of these and get lost in it. Even though there isn't much going on, it invites your imagination to fill in the pieces.
"In one of the eight sections of the show, titled "Friendscape" and focused on the natural world and animals, the pair are struck by a cluster of seven delicately-carved waterfowl made out of wood by an anonymous, long-dead Korean artist. "That has to allude to BTS somehow because of the seven members, right?" said Karra. "Most winters, he likes to make little snow ducks — seven of them for the members. So I think that might be a bit of a nod to that."
"We're on the seventh floor, and there are seven ducks," said Walker. "It's all symbolic."
Not all of the art on display is as easy for these fans to interpret. A rock with the word "candy" engraved on it in orange by the contemporary multimedia artist Wonwoo Lee leaves Walker and Karra baffled. Fittingly, it's in a section titled "I don't know … but I like it."
"Yeah, I don't know either," Walker said with a shrug.
Seeing art — and making art
There's a lot to take in, with more than 170 works on display. Progress through the museum is slow-going, not just because of the crush of people packed into the galleries, but also because Karra and Walker keep bumping into other fans. Many of them stop to chat as well as share their own artworks inspired by RM and BTS.
"Would you like a bookmark?" said museumgoer Sara Larios, offering Karra and Walker her miniature works of art. "I made these from fabric from my mom's sewing cupboard."
Larios said she had flown in to see the exhibition from Zambia. She said RM has motivated her to spend more time experiencing art. "Back in Zambia, on RM's birthday, I organized Zambian fans to go to the National Museum on an art walk," she said.
As a maker of BTS-inspired art herself, Karra said she is touched by the various little gifts other fans have pressed into her hands. "It's so cool that these are not just freebies. A lot of them are handmade. It's like you're making art in response to the art," Karra said. "So I think that's beautiful."
For Walker, the experience of visiting a museum for the first time in her life has been eye-opening. "I guess I always thought that you had to have some kind of knowledge when looking at art to resonate with it. But after going through it, I feel like I could get something out of museums," she said. "I'll be back."
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