Los Angeles-based Gehry was selected by the museum board to design this ensemble set among mature live oaks in the hope that his flamboyant work would draw tourists as it had to his Guggenheim Museum of 1997 in Bilbao, Spain. It combines the names of Annette O’Keefe, diligent fundraiser for the institution, and George Ohr (1857–1915), who proclaimed himself the “mad potter of Biloxi.” Ohr apprenticed with New Orleans potter Joseph Meyer before establishing a studio (not extant) in his hometown. His eccentric persona extended to his work, and he became known for the strange and expressionist shapes of his pots and his colorful glazes.
Gehry designed five buildings for the museum. Farthest east is the Mississippi Sound Welcome Center, with a rooftop overlook; the adjacent IP Casino Resort and Spa Exhibition Gallery; the nearby Gallery of African American Art; the City of Biloxi Center for Ceramics farther west; and the centrally located cluster of four “pods,” which form the John S. and James L. Knight Gallery and house George Ohr pottery exhibitions. Gehry’s abstract structures of brick, stucco, and stainless steel were intended, he said, to “dance” with the surrounding live oaks. Also here is a late-nineteenth-century cottage rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina as the Pleasant Reed Interpretive Center, housing exhibitions on local African American history.