Scarborough fare

The curator of Scarborough Art Gallery, Jan Bee Brown, adjusts exhibits celebrating the tide of change that shaped the British seaside holiday.

The Bathing Beauties exhibition, which opens at the gallery today, features icons from Scarborough's heyday, and also designs for seaside chalets of the future.

The story behind Scarborough's beach huts is central to the exhibition. It includes vintage bathing costumes, railway posters and pictures provided by holidaymakers of happy times in their seafront chalets.

But the exhibition, which runs until May 9, also has an eye on the future, featuring more than 60 weird and wonderful futuristic beach hut designs.

They were selected from competition entries by 240 architects from 15 countries competing for the commission to build their 21st century designs on the Lincolnshire coast.

A spokesman said: "The exhibition is an innovating and engaging look at the architecture of the beach hut design.

"The best 100 models will be on show here in Scarborough. The

exhibition is complemented by our popular vintage railway posters and a display of contemporary photographs depicting life in Scarborough's beach huts.

"We will also be showing our collection of historic swimwear and asking local design students to invent the bathing costume of the future."