🎂 Billionaire Birthday Queen: Hong Ra-hee Turns Another Year Wiser, Richer, and Still the Art World’s Most Glorious Disrupter

Happy birthday to Hong Ra-hee, the Samsung heiress, art-world power broker, and the woman behind a staggering $11.3 billion fortune who, at 78, shows no signs of slowing down. As the former director of Samsung’s Leeum Museum of Art and the widow of late Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee, Hong has spent decades shaping both the conglomerate’s cultural footprint and its bottom line. Her net worth—fueled by a 3.8% stake in Samsung Electronics and a legendary art collection that includes works by Rothko and Richter—makes her one of the richest women in Asia. But let’s be real: what we really love about Hong is her unapologetic taste for the weird, the wonderful, and the wonderfully awful.

This year, Hong’s influence was felt loud and clear at the RA Summer Exhibition, which, in a shocking turn, was less awful than usual. Yes, you read that right. While the show still drowns in Michael Craig-Martins and Bob and Roberta Smiths, and the opening gallery is a migraine-inducing wall of still lifes, coordinator Ryan Gander brought a much-needed dose of strangeness. His odd little living room in the Small Weston Room—complete with a Bowie karaoke video, a disembodied corpse, and silver boots—offered a welcome break from the usual garden paintings. And who can forget the two paintings of cars on fire by Harry Hill, or the haunting ink drawing by Gray Wielebinski? It’s the kind of chaotic, glorious mess that Hong, a known champion of boundary-pushing art, would absolutely adore. The show even has a Tracey Emin nude (half-arsed, as always) and a giant Antony Gormley you can enter from his backside—because nothing says “birthday celebration” like questionable art.

So here’s to Hong Ra-hee: a woman who built an empire, curated a museum, and still finds time to appreciate the sublime ridiculousness of a poodle cradling a portrait of another poodle. Her latest achievement? Enduring another Summer Exhibition with grace, humor, and a bank account that could buy every single piece in the room—including the rubbish Sean Scullys. From her early days as a fashion icon to her quiet reign over Samsung’s cultural legacy, Hong proves that the best birthday gift is staying gloriously, unapologetically yourself. Cheers to you, Hong—may your next year be as rich, as strange, and as wonderfully awful as this year’s show.