Michelangelo Antonioni's Sartorial Vision

Courtesy Giambattista Valli

With the 50th anniversary of the classic film L’Avventura, by Michelangelo Antonioni, I’m reminded of the Italian director’s aesthetic vision. Besides his innovative cinematography, there’s such a nuanced way to how he portrays women, highlighted by their wardrobes. The polka-dot skirt suit, checked pencil skirt and tailored trench that the stunning Monica Vitti wears in L’Avventura are both modern and classic. You almost forget it’s 1960. Antonioni approached filmmaking like a painter, using clothes to define the characters in their land­scape. When I watch Lucia Bosé in Cronaca di un Amore, I find a contemporary relevance to her style: simplicity in dress meets gobs of jewelry. All these years later, his vision remains the gold standard of elegance.

The New Departures Mobile App

Photo courtesy of Expand the Room

With the same smartly curated approach you find in our pages, we’ve created the Ultimate City Guides app, featuring top 10 lists of hotels, shops, lounges, museums and galleries, restaurants and VIP events worth attending. We started with New York and now present Hong Kong. Go to departures.com/apps to download it for free. Once you’ve downloaded and launched the app, enter the code DPNOV11 for full access.

Download It Now: New York, Hong Kong and Miami

Available in 2012: Buenos Aires, Chicago, Las Vegas, London, Los Angeles, Paris and San Francisco

Britain's Cutting-Edge Architecture

Balancing Barn. Photo by MVRDV, The Balancing Barn 2010/ © Living Architecture

Among the winners of the Royal Institute of British Architects 2011 RIBA Awards are a few brilliant buildings one can actually sleep in. The cantilevered Balancing Barn (rooms, from $40, above), in Suffolk, and the Shingle House (rooms, from $35), a small barn-like structure on the scenic Dungeness beach in Kent, are part of the Living Architecture program, which offers design-savvy travelers cutting-edge shelters. living-architecture.co.uk.

Colorado: Vail International Dance Festival

Back in 2009, Departures talked with long-time New York City Ballet principal Damian Woetzel, a who had just signed on to oversee the Vail International Dance Festival. We have looked forward to the summer event ever since. Enhanced by its Rocky Mountain backdrop and the Gerald R. Ford outdoor amphitheater, the festival has quickly gained a cult following: More than 20,000 people attended from the U.S. and Europe last year. Running July 31 through August 13, the 2011 lineup includes a 30th-anniversary celebration of the Mark Morris Dance Company and five never-before-performed pieces by choreographers Christopher Wheeldon, Emery LeCrone, Trey McIntyre, Charles "Lil Buck" Riley and Richard Siegal. July 31 through August 13; from $20; 970-777-2015; vaildance.org.

Photo Courtesy Erin Baiano

Washington, D.C.: NASA’s Art Collection at the Smithsonian

In 1962, four years after NASA was established, the organization's administrator James E. Webb asked a group of artists to interpret the experience of spaceflight. Since then, a lineup of prominent artists, including Norman Rockwell, Andy Warhol, Jamie Wyeth and Annie Leibovitz, has created space-inspired work. Now, just in time for the final liftoff of the Space Shuttle Program, more than 70 of those drawings, photographs, paintings and sculptures have been brought together for "NASA | Art: 50 Years of Exploration," an exhibition at the National Air and Space museum in Washington, D.C. through October 9. Independence Ave. at 6th St. SW; 202-633-2214; nasm.si.edu.

Photo Courtesy NASA Art Program

Boston: Gems and Jewels at the Museum of Fine Arts

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston will have a glamorous opening July 19, when the ribbon will be cut at the Rita J. and Stanley H. Kaplan Family Foundation Gallery, one of few in the U.S. dedicated solely to jewelry. The inaugural exhibit, called "Jewels, Gems and Treasures," is a collection of 75 decorative objects from ancient times to the present, from a 24^th-century BC Nubian conch shell amulet to a Verdura enameled cuff bracelet adorned with jeweled Maltese crosses that belonged to Coco Chanel. Other highlights include Mary Todd Lincoln's diamond brooch and matching earrings, cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post's platinum and diamond brooch with a 60-carat Mughal emerald at its center, and the Balletta Bulldog, made with gold, silver, agate, diamonds and rubies, by Peter Carl Fabergé. Side note: While you're there, be sure to visit the Dale Chihuly blown-glass exhibit before it closes on August 7. Admission is $22; 465 Huntingdon Ave.; 617-267-9300; mfa.org.

Photo © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

San Francisco: “Radical Beauty” à la Irving Penn

Starting June 30 in San Francisco, the Fraenkel Gallery pays tribute to the late Irving Penn. Unlike most odes to the photographer, this one will not focus on his fashion portraiture but on his appreciation for diverse ideas of human beauty and ability to contrast the grotesque with the transcendent. The 30 images on display in "Radical Beauty 1946-2007" include three 1940s female nudes of generous weight (which were not displayed until 30 years after their creation) and portraits of native Papua New Guinea warriors with pierced nasal septums and bush arrows. Many of the photographs feature elegant bodies reminiscent of the high-fashion models Penn usually photographed, but with obscured faces; his famous Football Face is among them. On view through August 20 at 49 Geary St., 4th floor; 415-981-2661; fraenkelgallery.com.

Mouth (for L'Oréal), New York, 1986 Copyright by the Irving Penn Foundation

New York: Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center

On June 17, the Film Society of Lincoln Center will cut the ribbon on the brand-new Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, a 17,500-square-foot venue that will house two screening theaters, an amphitheater and a café on Lincoln Center's redeveloped campus in New York. Designed by David Rockwell and Rockwell Group, the street-level and underground spot makes use of what was once underutilized office space and a parking garage. The entrance is marked by a bright-orange, crystalline-shaped vestibule on 65^th Street, the façade of which is flanked by glass walls imprinted with the thousand movie titles screened by the Film Society. The 144-seat Francesca Beale Theater has acoustically absorptive wall panels evoking the look of 1920s Italian opera house curtains, while the more intimate Howard Gilman Theater has 87 bench-style seats and modern-chic blackened wood and resin pilasters framing the screen. Both have cushioned stadium seating, unobstructed sightlines and wide aisles for maximum comfort. The site also has a less formal amphitheater that will host art installations and seminars, and a 152-inch Panasonic plasma screen that's the world's largest to date. The inaugural film will be Andrew Rossi's Page One: Inside the New York Times, a fly-on-the-wall documentary that chronicles the Gray Lady's media desk and the print giant's role in an increasingly digital world. The center will also host the New York Film Festival in late September. On W. 65^th St. between Broadway and Amsterdam Ave.; 212-875-5601; filmlinc.com.

Photo dBox/Rockwell Group

Washington, D.C.: Double Opening at The Phillips Collection

Two of the biggest names in abstract art, Wassily Kandinsky and Frank Stella, will have openings at Washington, D.C.'s Phillips Collection on June 11. Kandinsky and the Harmony of Silence is an in-depth study of the Russian painter's famous 1913 Painting with White Border, which will be on view alongside 11 of his preparatory studies in oil, watercolor, ink and pencil. Using infrared technology and chemical analyses, specialists found that this series sheds light on Kandinsky's creative process. Also in the gallery is the first museum presentation of Frank Stella's sonata-inspired work. Titled Stella Sounds: The Scarlatti K Series, the exhibit features eight sculptures evoking the melodies and rhythms of 18^th-century Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti and 20^th-century American musicologist Ralph Kirkpatrick. The wall-mounted pieces echo Kandinsky's brightly colored abstract themes but with a 21^st-century fabrication process involving lightweight white resin, industrial automotive paint and steel tubing. On view through September 4 at 1600 21st St. NW; 202-387-2151; phillipscollection.org.

Photo © 2011 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photograph © 2011 Bruce White

Venice: The 54th International Art Biennale

The Venice Biennale is called the Olympics of art for a reason: it happens every two years, the focus is on exhibition and celebration rather than commerce, and participants from all over the world are invited to create a "pavilion" of art to represent their country. On June 4, the exhibition kicks off when a record-breaking 89 nations will uncover their pieces housed within the city's Giardini and Arsenale pavilions. The U.S. pavilion, named "Gloria" referring to the glory of god and the glory of military battles, features six new works by artistic duo Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, including an overturned 60-ton army tank that now functions as a treadmill. Countries participating for the first time will be Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, and Andorra, while Iraq, India, and Congo are a few of the countries returning after extended absences. In the main space is "ILLUMInations," the special exhibition by this year's curator, Switzerland's Bice Curiger, who amassed works by 83 international artists that highlight the endeavors of a globalized world. Also, iPhone users should download Christie's free Biennale app, which visitors can use to locate specific pavilions and get suggestions of stops to make along one's way through the city. On view through November 27; . labiennale.org.

Photo Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia