Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art

The Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art is the single best reason to put art on a Biloxi itinerary. It is built around the work of George E. Ohr (1857 to 1918), who called himself the Mad Potter of Biloxi and spent his life throwing clay vessels so thin, so twisted and so playful that his neighbors dismissed him as a crank. He kept thousands of pieces in his family's collection after failing to sell them, and it was only decades after his death that the art world recognized him as a forerunner of American abstract expressionism and studio ceramics. Today his folded, crumpled, ribboned pots hang in major museums, and Biloxi holds the largest public collection of his work in the world. The museum campus is an attraction in its own right. The architect Frank Gehry designed a cluster of curving, metal-clad and brick buildings shaped to feel like a grove of oak-like pavilions, set among live oaks on the Biloxi waterfront. The project was reworked and delayed by Hurricane Katrina, which damaged the area and destroyed an earlier building, and the finished campus now stands as a bold, sculptural statement of the city's recovery. Alongside the Ohr galleries, the museum presents changing exhibitions of regional and national work and keeps the history of the Gulf Coast's own artists in view, including the Pleasant Reed house, a restored home connected to a formerly enslaved man who became a prominent Biloxi builder and landowner.

Going in with a plan helps. Start in the galleries that show Ohr's pottery, because the experience is about looking closely: the walls of some pots are barely thicker than eggshell, and he would crush, pinch and fold them while still wet so that each one became a small piece of sculpture. Wall text and labels explain his glazes, his stunt-like self-promotion, including his famous mustache and his stationery, and the way he predicted that his work would be treasured only after his death.

Allow around ninety minutes for the Ohr material and a first look at whatever exhibition is installed; add time if you want to stroll the grounds and read the architecture from outside.

The setting adds a lot. The campus sits on Beach Boulevard just a short walk from the Biloxi Schooner pier and the Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum, so a morning of art can lead straight into a boat or history stop. The grounds are shaded by old live oaks that survived the storm, and the building shapes reward a slow walk around the perimeter, which is free to do even if you do not buy a ticket. Photographers should note that the facades catch strong light mid-morning and late afternoon.

For first-time visitors, it adds a layer of depth to a coast better known for casinos and beaches, and it makes clear that Biloxi has been producing eccentric, memorable culture for well over a century.