Friday Nights at NOMA opens the museum’s doors for many interesting activities: live music, movies, children’s activities, lectures, and more.

5 – 8 p.m. Art on the Spot
5 – 7 p.m. Edible Book Day presentations
5:30 – 8:30 p.m. Music by Margie Perez and her Cosa Cubana
6 p.m. Lecture and book signing: Hermes Mallea, author of Great Houses of Havana

ABOUT EDIBLE BOOK DAY

Edible Book Day is an international celebration of literature, art, and food. Museums, libraries, and universities throughout the world participate to create a program for creative individuals and community groups to highlight their artistic, baking, and decorating skills. NOMA invites creative bakers, both professional and home-kitchen aspirants, to bake and decorate cakes inspired by books through the integration of text, literary inspiration or form. For more information, or to enter the contest, contact Sheila Cork at scork@noma.org or call 504.658.4117.

ABOUT MARGIE PEREZ AND HER COSA CUBANA

Margie Perez is a vivacious singer and songwriter specializing in a versatile blend of blues, pop, and Latin with a New Orleans funky touch. Dubbed by Offbeat Magazine as “one of the hardest working musicians in New Orleans,” she performs in a wide range of musical acts, she frequently performs original music with her band Cosa Cubana. She released her New Orleans debut CD, “Singing For My Supper,” on Threadhead Records in 2010.

ABOUT HERMES MALLEA AND GREAT HOUSES OF HAVANA

Hermes Mallea. Photo by Rick Guidotti.

Great Houses of Havana by Hermes Mallea celebrates one hundred years of creativity, design, and style that made Havana “the Paris of the Caribbean.” For four hundred years, the Cuban capital was the center of Spanish trade in the western hemisphere. With the expansion of the sugar industry, independence from Spain, and North American investment, Havana became a city of great wealth, great style, and great houses in a vocabulary that was a unique amalgam of European, American, and Caribbean elements. Great Houses of Havana traces the evolution of the Cuban home from the classic, Spanish colonial courtyard house to the “Tropical Modernist” villas of the 1950s—houses reflecting international architecture trends while remaining true to the Cuban tradition.

Hermes Mallea is an architect and a partner in the New York City based firm M(Group). Mallea studied at the University of Miami’s School of Architecture and Columbia University’s graduate school of Historic Preservation and is a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). A longtime collector of vintage Cuban photographs, Mr. Mallea has travelled to Cuba frequently to do research for his current book and to lecture on historic preservation.