In celebration of this year’s first Salon Supper Club Presented by First Horizon Bank on Thursday, July 16, take a look inside the Spring 2026 issue of the NOMA Magazine to learn more about the origins of this beloved event series.
Tickets for July 16’s event, “A Surreal Summer,” are on sale now at NOMA.org.
When NOMA paused our Odyssey and LOVE in the Garden events in 2024, we considered new ways to gather, celebrate, and raise funds. What would it look like if we tried something different—something smaller, more intimate, but no less joyful?
The answer came, as many good ideas in our city do, through food: since every dinner in New Orleans ends with the question, “where are we eating next,” we wondered if NOMA could be a place where people ate, drank, socialized, and discovered art all at once. Drawing inspiration from the historic European salon tradition, NOMA developed plans for an intimate and dynamic event series where each iteration drew in different audiences while keeping art at the center. The Salon Supper Club, a three-part series of art- and food-driven events, was born.
With support from leading sponsor First Horizon Bank and its Regional President–Gulf States and NOMA trustee Tony Adams, who responded to NOMA’s pitch with an immediate “we’re in,” we launched the series in May 2025. Mary Beth Benjamin, Katherine Duncan, and Ileana Feoli, chaired the inaugural event. Guest chef E.J. Lagasse of Emeril’s added to the youthful appeal of an evening tied to Nicolas Floc’h: Fleuves-Océans, Mississippi Watershed. Speaking to The Pearl for the article “The Art of Gathering,” spring’s event co-chair Ileana Feoli noted that the new event series brought “a wonderful group together to celebrate art, cuisine, and culture—a New Orleanian’s favorite pastimes!”
Trustees Terrah Green, Jenny Vorhoff, Elizabeth Williams, Ariel Wilson-Harris, along with their spouses, chaired the summer Salon Supper Club under the theme “A Taste of West Africa and New Orleans.” Chef Serigne Mbaye of Dakar NOLA, who served on the advisory committee for the evening’s focus exhibition New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations, also served as guest chef for the event. Live music, a poetry reading by local author Sunni Patterson, and dance performances from the Kumbuka African Dance Collective marked the evening as a true celebration of our city’s cultural and historic connections to West Africa.
The third and final Salon Supper Club of the year–themed “A Feast for the Senses”–featured a seated dinner by Chef Alfredo Nogueira of Cane & Table, VALS, and Cure. The evening celebrated the first phase of the museum’s reinstallation of its Arts of the Americas galleries with dance performances from tango duo Celina Rotundo and Hugo Patyn, as well as live music from The Javier Olondo Trio and salterio player and scholar Marc Armitano Domingo. Led by chairs Millie and Robert Kohn, Martine and Juan Linares, and Pam Ryan and Meaghan Ryan Bonavita during National Hispanic Heritage Month, the event embraced the city’s Spanish heritage, cuisine, and art.
NOMA has no plans to abandon its long-standing traditions: LOVE in the Garden returned in November 2025, and NOMA will host large-scale galas in the future. But the Salon Supper Club has provided us with new avenues for raising funds while keeping the museum, its collection, and its exhibitions at the center. By weaving together food, art, and community, NOMA has found a way to keep New Orleans eating, talking, and celebrating through art.