The line starts now.

Actually, it probably started three weeks ago in a Discord server you aren’t cool enough to join. On October 3rd, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will open its doors to a solo exhibition curated by, and featuring the personal collection of, Kim Namjoon. You know him as RM, the leader of BTS. The man who single-handedly turned the Seoul art scene into a high-stakes scavenger hunt for millions of teenagers. Now, he’s bringing that specific brand of chaos to Third Street.

SFMOMA needs this. Let’s not pretend otherwise. The museum has been staring at its balance sheets with the grim expression of a tech founder three months before a total pivot. They need bodies. They need "engagement." They need the kind of demographic that doesn't mind standing in the fog for six hours just to look at a Moon Jar.

The exhibit, titled with the kind of minimalist weight usually reserved for luxury watch ads, isn’t just a gallery show. It’s a stress test for the city’s infrastructure. SFMOMA is reportedly eyeing a "special exhibition fee" that pushes the total cost of entry north of $60. That’s a steep ask for a city that’s already priced out most of its actual artists, but for the Army, it’s a bargain. It’s a pilgrimage.

RM isn’t a dilettante. That’s the annoying part for the critics who want to dismiss this as a celebrity vanity project. He’s a legitimate whale. He buys Yun Hyong-keun. He tracks down George Nakashima furniture with the focus of a venture capitalist hunting for a seed round. He’s spent the last five years using his Instagram feed to turn obscure Korean modernists into household names. He isn’t just collecting art; he’s minting it.

But there’s a friction here that no one in the PR department wants to talk about. SFMOMA is a space built for quiet contemplation, or at least the performance of it. You walk through the white cubes, you look at a Rothko, you feel a vague sense of existential dread, and you go buy a $14 espresso. That doesn't work when you inject 50,000 people with smartphones and a parasocial attachment to the curator.

The museum is already floating rumors of "time-slotted entry" and a "no-photo policy" in certain wings. Good luck with that. You can’t tell a generation raised on the "RM Museum Tour" aesthetic to put their phones away. If a fan looks at a painting and doesn't post it to a Story, did the painting even happen? The trade-off is simple: the museum gets a massive infusion of cash and a lowered median age, but they lose the very "stillness" that RM claims to love about these works. It’s a transactional exchange of sanctity for solvency.

Then there’s the San Francisco of it all. This is a city currently obsessed with its own "doom loop" narrative. We’ve seen the retail exodus. We’ve seen the empty office towers. Bringing the world’s biggest pop star’s private collection to a neighborhood that’s struggling to find its soul feels like a very expensive Band-Aid. It’s a momentary spike in foot traffic that won’t solve the underlying problem: that art in this city has become a luxury good for the tech elite, rather than a living, breathing part of the community.

The exhibit will feature pieces from RM’s private home—works he’s lived with, meditated over, and shared via grainy mid-night selfies. By moving them into the institutional glare of SFMOMA, the mystery evaporates. They become artifacts of a brand. They become props in a larger narrative about global influence.

Don't expect to find many local art students in the queue. They’ve been priced out of the neighborhood, and likely priced out of the $60 ticket. Instead, expect a sea of $300 hoodies and portable chargers. Expect the gift shop to be picked clean of "RM-approved" postcards within forty-eight hours.

SFMOMA is betting the house on the idea that celebrity can bridge the gap between "high art" and "mass culture." They might be right. But when the exhibit closes and the posters are torn down, we’ll be left with the same old question that haunts every corner of this city.

Is this a cultural moment, or just another successful product launch?