SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
The gift shop at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is expecting a huge rush, and its director of retail, Shane Salvata, says she's ready.
SHANE SALVATA: This is hands down the most inventory that we've ever front-loaded for an exhibition.
PFEIFFER: That's because of the K-pop band BTS and more specifically, its leader RM. The pop star is displaying art from his personal collection at a museum for the first time. NPR's Chloe Veltman joined fans for a tour.
CHLOE VELTMAN, BYLINE: The line to get into the RM show at SFMOMA isn't as long as the one to buy RM-related merch.
UNIDENTIFIED EMPLOYEE: This line up here is about 30 minutes. We are currently sold out of the teacups and coffee cups.
VELTMAN: But it's long enough to get to know a little bit about 20-something Bay Area-based BTS fans, Joi Karra...
JOI KARRA: I've been to SFMOMA many times before.
VELTMAN: ...And Bre Walker.
BRE WALKER: This is my first time actually coming to an art museum, and it's all because of Nam-joon.
VELTMAN: Kim Nam-joon - that's RM's real name. Karra says the fans have come up with a verb to describe the lifestyle associated with the K-pop star's interests.
KARRA: Nam-jooning (ph) - just doing all the things that Nam-joon loves doing as well.
VELTMAN: Like visiting museums and collecting art - RM has been doing these things for nearly a decade. A lot of the works in his collection are by major Korean artists, such as the 20th century abstract masters Kim Whanki and Yun Hyong-keun. RM even wrote a song about Yun.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YUN (WITH ERYKAH BADU)")
ERYKAH BADU: (Singing) Yeah, yeah, yeah.
RM: (Singing) I wanna be a human 'fore I do some art. It's a cruel world but there's gon' be my part.
VELTMAN: Ahead of the exhibition, RM said it was important to him to make sure the art on display resonated with today's audiences.
RM: There were two questions that mattered most to me. Does it move me, really? Does this artist and does this work still have something to tell us?
VELTMAN: 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.
WALKER: He's got this obsession with umber and its relation to Earth. He's a very nature guy.
KARRA: You can, like, look at one of these and, like, get lost in it, even though there's not much going on, but it invites your imagination to fill in the pieces.
VELTMAN: Sometimes the fans see a connection between the art and RM's musical life. In a section of the show titled "Friendscape" focused on the natural world and animals, Karra and Walker encounter seven waterfowl made from wood by a long-dead, anonymous Korean artist.
KARRA: That has to allude to BTS somehow because of the seven members.
WALKER: This being the seventh floor, the seven ducks, it's all symbolic.
VELTMAN: But 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."
WALKER: Yeah, I don't know either (laughter).
VELTMAN: There's a lot to take in with more than 170 works on display. It's slow going because Karra and Walker keep bumping into other fans.
SARA LARIOS: Yeah. Hi. Nice to see you again.
VELTMAN: And many of these fans are sharing their own artworks inspired by RM and BTS with each other.
LARIOS: Would you like a bookmark?
VELTMAN: Sara Larios flew in from Zambia to see the show.
LARIOS: I made this from fabric from my mom's sewing cupboard, actually.
VELTMAN: As a maker of BTS-inspired art herself, Joi Karra says she is touched by the little gifts other fans have pressed into her hands.
KARRA: A lot of them are handmade, and it's like you're making art in response to the art, so I think that's beautiful.
VELTMAN: For Bre Walker, the experience of visiting an art museum for the first time has been eye-opening.
WALKER: 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. I'll be back.
VELTMAN: Karra and Walker say they are planning to return at least once more to the show. Chloe Veltman, NPR News, San Francisco.
(SOUNDBITE OF SUMMER WALKER SONG, "FMT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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