Fund Established to Help Save Gehry's Ohr-O'Keefe Museum in Mississippi

Fund Established to Help Save Gehrys Ohr-OKeefe Museum in Mississippi
Friends of David Whitney, the respected art curator who died last June, launched a building fund in his honor at New York's Gagosian Gallery on December 9.

It will aid reconstruction of the Ohr-O'Keefe museum, in Biloxi, Miss.

The Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, FAIA, was headed toward a July 2006 opening when it received substantial damage during Hurricane Katrina.

The centerpieces of the 25,000-square-foot museum were four podlike gallery pavilions to show the work of George E. Ohr (1857-1918), the famed 'mad potter of Biloxi.'

Ohr is celebrated as one of America's first ceramic fine artists.

Flamboyant and mercurial, Ohr made the act of throwing pots a performance, producing colorful vases, bowls and pots pinched and ruffled into shapes of impressive delicacy.

Whitney was consulting curator for the museum's inaugural exhibition when he died.

Whitney was also a prominent art collector, and the long-time life partner of architect Philip Johnson.

"David was a great friend," said Gehry, standing by an architectural model of the complex at the Fund launch.

"I will do whatever it takes to get this institution back on its feet."

Gehry's design included six twisting, metal-clad pavilions arranged around 26 ancient live oaks on a four-acre site.

The gallery "pods" are like curved silos, and