MAY 18-31

INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF CANOES

Maui's two-week celebration of Hawai'i's heritage honors the voyaging canoe and the Pacific navigators. Festival hosts welcome cultural delegations from Pacific island nations in a traditional 'awa ceremony at Kamehameha Iki Beach Park. Throughout the event, master carvers create Polynesian canoes from logs. The celebration ends with a ceremonial launching of the carved canoes at sunset, followed by ho'olaule'a beneath the stars.

And there is plenty besides the canoe ceremonies: entertainment, arts demonstrations and performances in Banyan Tree Park. The penultimate day sees the Festival of Canoes Parade, which features ancient warrior games, Polynesian crafts and food.

JULY 2

PALIO OF SIENA

If your budget stretches from Hawai'i to Italy this summer, there is no more exciting event to witness than Siena's annual show of bravado.

For the Sienesi, the Palio horse race around the Piazza del Campo is a matter of life and death. Daring, courage, lunacy, bribery, poisoning and death threats have all played their parts in the event since its inauguration in 1310.

The race consists of bareback riders making three circuits of the main square and is over in 90 seconds, but it is preceded by five hours of flag-throwing acrobatics. For the locals, it is the culmination of an entire year's plotting and scheming, and for visitors, it is a spectacular show.

Activity in the Piazza del Campo begins mid-morning; the race is in the afternoon. Free.

JULY 1-SEPT. 21

J.M.W. TURNER EXHIBIT

This fall's exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is the largest and most comprehensive retrospective of the artist's work ever presented in the U.S. Around 70 oil paintings and 70 works on paper illustrate his seascapes, topographical