With K-pop dominating headlines—especially following K-Pop Demon Hunters’ win for best animated film at the 2026 Oscars—the genre is now making art world inroads. Beloved K-pop boyband BTS performed their new single, Swim, at the Guggenheim Museum in New York for a segment on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon this past Wednesday.
The performance celebrated the release of BTS’s 10th studio album, ARIRANG, which was released on March 20th—six years after their last album. The recording shows the seven original members at the center of the Guggenheim’s signature rotunda. “With a storied history of drawing in the most creative minds in arts and culture for nearly 90 years, the Guggenheim was the perfect fit to bring BTS’ vision to life for their return to the stage,” the Guggenheim staff wrote in a statement.
The museum is currently showing a massive retrospective of work by Carol Bove, which opened on March 5th. Bove is known for her epically scaled sculptures, which incorporate brightly painted industrial materials, such as steel tubes and rebar. Fallon introduced the boyband at the beginning of the video in front of Bove’s Vase Face I / The Ascent to Heaven on a Dentist’s Chair (2022). After the introduction, the singers make their way around the rotunda among Bove’s minimalist metal sculptures, including the yellow Cutting Corners (2018).
BTS’s leading man, RM (Kim Namjoon), is one of South Korea’s leading art collectors. Artsy reported earlier this year that RM has engaged with artists including Kim Whanki, Yun Hyong-keun, Lee Ufan, Lee Jung-seob, and Kwon Jin Kyu. Meanwhile, his bandmate, V, has collected a deer sculpture by South Korean artist Kim Woo Jin and Woo Kuk Won’s painting Lunatic Beauty (2022), among other works.
Beyond BTS members, several other young K-pop stars are also avid art collectors. They include T.O.P, Taeyang, and G-Dragon from the band BIGBANG, and Cha Eun-woo of ASTRO.
