Today's idea - Museumaker's Black Butterflies at the Royal Pavilion

Museumaker opens today. Artist Claire Twomey has ben commissioned to install 3,000 black ceramic butterflies in the Royal Pavilion for museumaker, spreading across the Banqueting Room, Great Kitchen and Entrance Hall, escaping throughout out other ground floor rooms.

The butterflies will cluster on the banqueting table, across window panes, in roof lights, on mantelpieces and other surfaces. Their sombre beauty will be a reflection on the excesses and frivolity of the past life of the Royal Pavilion.

Twomey is a ceramicist/artist who works with clay in large-scale installations, sculpture and site-specific works. Over the past 10 years she has exhibited at Tate, Victoria & Albert Museum, Crafts Council, and the Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, Japan.

If you've never been the the Pavilion before this might be a great time to go, and I'm especially tempted towards it because it's been the fancy museums that I normally pop into and love.

Running until January 2011

Cost: £9.50 adults, £5.40 children, £7.50 students
Location: Royal Pavilion
Map: here

Today's idea - Royal Pavilion Annual Free Day

If Royal Pavilions aren't your thing we also like the look of Final Cut which I wrote about when they had their special film night last month.

Today the Royal Pavilion, big old Brighton palace attraction, opens its doors for free. Whilst my Mother describes it as "the place Queen Victoria lived" its roots, are a big different to this. It was built as a seaside retreat by King George IV (the then Prince Regent) when his Doctor suggestions Sea Water would be good for his gout - and also a quiet place to date his long-time chick, Mrs Fitzherbert.

After this classy beginning, the Indo-Saracenic style (also curiously known as Indo-Gothic) building was sold around a bit, with Queen Victoria selling it to Brighton when she found it didn't hide her from the rowdy masses who came down by train, and playing a short stint as a hospital in the First World War, it's now a museum. Actually, the sale to Brighton is why it's free today - a celebration of this. (Wee, free.)

The Royal Pavilion unsurprisingly costs money but today it's free. It's full of 'chinoiserie style' - something I know nothing about - and traditional big rooms such as 'The Great Kitchen', 'Royal Bedrooms', 'Banqueting Rooms' and 'The Music Room'. None of these interest me personally, but it seems something that's interesting to those into old stylish buildings, and for those that are just curious but too uninclined to pay an end to their curiosity.

It's such a massive landmark that it seems silly to pass up the opportunity. It should be lovely. Details are: free , and open from 10-am-4:30pm.