"What drove two artists to track down every stuffed polar bear in Britain?" 'Bear-faced chic of Arctic giants' by Benjamin Secher, The Telegraph, 14th October 2006.

'Horniman Museum searches for missing polar bear' by Melina Greenfield, 24 Museum, 11 October 2006.

The Great White Bear at the Horniman Museum, 21 October 2006 - 25 March 2007.

From Cradle to Grave: an art installation by David Critchley, Susie Freeman and Liz Lee

COMPASS entry

Woman's Hour, 2003

On the cover of the BMJ, 333(7557)

'Chilling mystery of Kelvingrove's secret signed Hitler photo' by Anna Miller. The Scotsman, 15 July 2006.

History, Sun, And Fresh Air: Museums With Parks And Gardens (Untold London).

Discover London Trails (24 hour museum), including Historic Gardens Museum Trail and Bright Lights and City Squares.

RSA Anniversary Treasure Trail. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Ethnomedica: Remembered Remedies - Researching the Herbal Traditions of Britain.

Dick Bruna is being honoured with a museum for his work in his hometown of Utrecht. Dick Bruna Huis opens on Saturday 18 February. More in today's Guardian. Miffy fun on the official Dick Bruna site and Noggin.

Sir John Soane was born today in 1753 in Goring, Oxfordshire. Most famous today for his museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields, he was Surveyor and Architect of the Bank of England for 45 years, from 1788, and Architect of the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

The Hunterian is displaying work by Jessie M King. The exhibition runs till 29 October

The McLellan Galleries are exhibiting some newly-acquired works by Marianne Grant, an artist who survived the Holocaust, drawing sketches whenever she could lay hands on materials to do so.

The London Look at the Museum of London.

For me, the highlight of Simon Patterson's exhibition'High Noon' at the Fruitmarket Gallery was General Assembly, which filled the mezzanine floor of the Gallery and was particluarly poignant given the ongoing news furore about the War in Iraq and whether or not the Government should have waited for a further UN Resolution. Fiona Bradley describes the work in the catalogue:
"The work consists of 76 individual structures bolted to the wall. T one end of the installation, 50 of the structures are arranged like the keys of a classic Olivetti Lettera typewrite, each printed with one of the letters of the QWERTY keyboard, complete with return key and space bar. Around the other three sides, the remaining 26 structures are evenly spaced in a single line to spell out the classic learn-to-type sentence 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.' The structures are all blue - Ford blue - with the exception of the return key, which is Mercedes red, and the typeface in which the letters on them are printed in Univers 55." (Fiona Bradley, 'General Assembly' in Simon Patterson. High Noon. Edinburgh, Fruitmarket, 2005. ISBN 0947912886. p.10).

Good to see the oil paintings by Ken Currie depicting Glasgow's history are still on show in the People's Palace.

"At Padua Evelyn acquired the preparations of human arteries, veins and nervesdissected out in the anatomy theatre by [Johann] Vesling's assistant, the surgeon Giovanni Leoni. Dried and mounted on four panels-the "tables" of Evelyn's description-these preparations were shipped to England by a circuitous route, and reunited with Evelyn in 1649. He records that he showed them to "Moulins the greate Chirurgion" in April of that year.3 Finally in October 1667 Evelyn presented the tables to the Royal Society, having some years previously declined Dr Charles Scarburgh's invitation to donate them to the College of Physicians.

... Evelyn's tables were presumably displayed there, until virtually the entirecontents of the repository were made over to the British Museum in June 1781 ... Held in store by the British Museum for a number of years, the tables were eventually presented to the Royal College of Surgeons in 1809, together with a miscellaneous collection of mainly medical and anatomical objects deemed "unfit to be preserved in the Museum". Here they survived the Blitz and the subsequent rustication of the Hunterian Museum collections, and are today displayed in the Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields."--'John Evelyn's Tables of Veins and Arteries: a rediscovered letter' by Richard K. Aspin. Medical History, 1995, 39: 493-499.

The Victoria & Albert Museum has just launched its interactive birthday book, a service which matches your birthday (day and month) with those of famous designers, artists and printers. You can find out a little about the person and see a picture of them or their work. You can also send friends an e-card with an image by or of someone who shares their birthday.