Your Life - Events

Monday, Nov. 02, 2009

Potter party hosted by Beau Rivage

George E. Ohr attired as a late 18th-century gentleman and a gourmet menu with French subtitles are just the icing on the cake for the eighth annual George Ohr Fundraising Gala. It’s set for Thursday at the Beau Rivage Resort & Casino in Biloxi.

It will be from 6 to 11 p.m. with a hosted bar throughout, four-course dinner and a silent auction featuring international trips and a one-of-a-kind etching of Frank Gehry’s initial drawing for the beach front Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi.

Tickets are $200 a person and available through the museum at 374-5547 or at the door.

Theme of the evening is “Let Them Eat Cake,” a saying erroneously attributed to Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), but very appropriate for the evening’s main event, which will be a Cake Pull for $3,000 worth of jewelry.

Tickets for that are $50 per pull, in the vein of drawing straws, but this time drawing ribbons out of an artificial cake. Winners will find a happy surprise at the end of their ribbons. The jewelry is John Hardy’s Kali collection, which is inspired by the smooth stones in the river beds of Bali. Pieces to be won Thursday night are a scarf pendant, chandelier earrings, a wide cuff bracelet and a smaller bracelet, a silver twist ring and a small oval chain.

This is the Beau Rivage’s eighth fundraising gala in its $1 million commitment to the museum that was upped from half a million dollars in 2004. For each, the Beau provides approximately $100,000 in goods and services, including food and entertainment, then all proceeds from ticket sales, auction sales and raffles are retained by the museum for its operations.

In return, the museum has named an area at its new museum after the Beau. Still under construction, the beachfront campus designed by Frank Gehry is slated to open Nov. 5, 2010, exactly a year from the day of the gala.

For the gala’s auction, there’s a custom-made metal etching of Gehry’s initial line drawing of the museum. Approximately 14 by 24 inches, it is on the same brushed stainless steel that will be on the finished pods. It was created by the same metal fabricator in Kansas City, Mo., that is building the pods.

International travel packages to be auctioned are valid for one year. These include a six-night golf package for two in Ireland, five nights with a choice of culinary experiences in Paris; and a five-night stay with wine tours in Napa Valley, Calif.

In the Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI theme, the evening’s menu includes a French name for each of its courses. On the menu is cream of cauliflower (Potage Madame du Barry), filet of sole stuffed with lobster and topped with a crawfish cream (Sole Louis XVI), seared center cut filet with truffle essence and sauce Choron, served with Pommes Dauphinoise and vegetables (Filet de Boeuf Talleyrand). For dessert, there will be ladyfingers layered with a strawberry Bavarian cream and petits fours, aka in French, Mignardise Marie Antoinette.

At 9 p.m. it’s goodbye 18th-century France and hello modern New Orleans, when the Big Bad Voodoo Daddy band takes the stage with music for dancing your heads off — or not.