Artful Arrangements
Mariz Longoria’s collections make her uptown New Orleans house an unexpected pleasure
Three weeks before Mardi Gras, Mariz Longoria’s uptown New Orleans yard was full of once-flourishing plants reduced to a pathetic state by a week’s worth of freezing temperatures.
Longoria planned to replace the casualties with trips to Harold’s Plants and Urban Roots; meanwhile, she celebrated the survivors. She gently patted the rabbit’s foot fern in a hanging basket on her porch. “I literally put towels on them to protect them,” she said.
Inside the house, she perched on a delicate armchair in the living room while her Shih Tzu Gus hopped up on a quilt-covered chaise longue and rested his chin on a pile of gardening books.
A tiny woman dressed in a black sweater, white slacks, and red loafers, with sunglasses atop her head, Longoria surveyed the roomful of interesting vistas she has created. The souvenirs of an interesting and varied life, her collections tell the story of the woman who has collected them.
The dramatic purple-gray walls make a perfect backdrop for crisp white curtains and white upholstered furniture, much of it antique. The walls are crammed with art and the rug-covered floor jammed with furniture, but it all feels exactly right.
Oversize books are stacked on the floor and the furniture; patchwork quilts are draped here and there; and stuffed animals share space with artfully arranged tablescapes.
“My love for purple,” she explained her wall color. “I could have everything purple. My bedroom wallpaper has purple pansies.”
She waved a hand at a beautifully framed collection of nudes by Finnish-born artist Thomas Ogle. “My daughter used to say she was embarrassed to bring friends home after school because of all the nudes,” she said of the drawings.
Longoria grew up in Central America. Friends call her Mariz (pronounced Mah-REEZ), but her full name is Maria Eugenia. “Every time my mother called me that I knew I was in trouble!” Her father Gus Longoria worked for Pan American Airways, which moved him from Guatemala to El Salvador and eventually to New Orleans.
The dramatic purple-gray walls make a perfect backdrop for crisp white curtains and white upholstered furniture, much of it antique. The walls are crammed with art and the rug-covered floor jammed with furniture, but it all feels exactly right.
“Every time there was a revolution in Guatemala we’d say, ‘Aviones! Aviones!’ Airplanes! Airplanes!” said Longoria. “Everybody was supposed to go down in the basement. I still have memories of that sound. I was five or six.”
When her family moved to El Salvador, Longoria felt truly at home. “I went to school in San Salvador, which is the city of my love. The people are so wonderful. The men and boys would bring you serenades under your window while the mariachis played. My father had to get up and invite them in for drinks and food. I had to stay in my room. I must have been about seventeen.
“In Latin America they are very strict. If I went to the show with a boy, my sister had to go with me as a chaperone.”
In her teens, Longoria attended St. Scholastica boarding school for girls in Covington because, “I was very rebellious!” The nuns were strict, but they did allow dances with the boys at nearby St. Paul’s. “There was always a nun telling you, ‘Don’t get too close!’” said Longoria.
“I was very rebellious!” The nuns were strict, but they did allow dances with the boys at nearby St. Paul’s. “There was always a nun telling you, ‘Don’t get too close!’” said Longoria.
With an American father and Guatemalan mother, Longoria grew up speaking English and Spanish. “When I started school in the States I had to take another language so I took Italian. Spanish and Italian are very similar. Some other girls in school spoke Spanish, but the nuns would deduct points for speaking it.”
She married young, “because I was ready to get out of the house,” and had a daughter. Divorced, she moved to New Orleans so her only child could attend the Academy of the Sacred Heart.
“The school was three blocks from here. We could get up really late and still make it to school.”
Longoria’s career has been as varied as her upbringing. Much of the art in her home came came from the St. Charles Gallery, where she kept books for owner Walker “Buddy” Ronaldson (1941–2014), an esteemed appraiser and collector who ran the gallery for more than forty years.
“I was very lucky to work there because I got everything at a discount,” said Longoria. “Buddy always tried to bring in a new person to have a show. I was always looking at things.”
She also once worked at the New Orleans Museum of Art, where she ran the Courtyard Café. In 1999, when the museum was celebrating artist Edgar Degas’ 1872–3 visit to New Orleans, his painting of his sister-in-law Estelle Musson Degas was a focal point. Longoria invented a dish she called Chicken Estelle, a French-style chicken salad made with “1 teaspoon chopped fresh French tarragon (no substitutes).” The café continued to serve it for several years.
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In 1992, Longoria was hired as development director for the International Children’s Hospital of New Orleans, a nonprofit devoted to providing medical care in less developed countries. On a trip to Honduras, she raised $6,000 in corporate donations. “This is very rewarding because this is the first time I can help both of my cultures,” she told HealthCare New Orleans at the time. “Growing up wealthy in Central America, I never saw the misery. We just turned our heads.”
She also organized a fund-raising cookbook for ICH in 1992. A Man in the Kitchen was a collection of recipes by prominent New Orleanians, including Patrick Taylor and Jim Bob Moffett.
In 1999, when the museum was celebrating artist Edgar Degas’ 1872–3 visit to New Orleans, his painting of his sister-in-law Estelle Musson Degas was a focal point. Longoria invented a dish she called Chicken Estelle ...
Among Longoria’s many talents is world-class networking. In the 1980s, her brother-in-law James Wysocki pursued his dream of playing at all one hundred golf courses listed as the world’s best by Golf Magazine. It took Wysocki, a trial lawyer, seven years to achieve his goal.
He played such exotic courses as the Royal Golf Dar Es Salam in Rabat, Morocco, and the Bali Handara in Indonesia but had tried and failed several times to play at the Augusta National in Georgia, site of the annual Master’s Tournament. Mariz saved the day by introducing Wysocki to a couple whose Mississippi son-in-law had a sister in Augusta whose husband was in the trucking business. His trucks were insured by a company whose vice president’s father had helped found the club. Wysocki got his round at Augusta.
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Almost by default, the art-loving Longoria became a collector. “I always loved the arts. But every time I sang, my sister Cristina told me to stop. Before that I thought I’d be the greatest ballerina.” In addition to buying art and furniture at auction, Longoria also collects sidewalk and yard art—namely, the fallen birds’ nests that are scattered about her living room. “If I’m walking and see a nest on the ground I pick it up,” she said. “Sometimes I find eggs, too. If not, I put [faux] eggs in it.” One nest has gold ribbon woven into it. Longoria said that is just how she found it. “I only added this leaf,” she said, pointing to a bit of fall color.
In addition to buying art and furniture at auction, Longoria also collects sidewalk and yard art—namely, the fallen birds’ nests that are scattered about her living room.
She paused at the sound of the high school band from nearby Sophie B. Wright practicing. “I feel it in my stomach when the band goes by,” she said of the young musicians practicing their Mardi Gras chops. “The only time I don’t like to live here is during Mardi Gras. They close the street and you can’t go anywhere.”
Ruth Laney can be reached at ruthlaney@cox.net.
This article originally appeared in our March 2018 issue. Subscribe to our print magazine today.