The organisers of celebrations marking the centenary of Cartwright Hall are seeking descendants of babies displayed in incubators at a grand 1904 festival which opened the art gallery.

And they also plan to mark the grave of a Somali woman who died during the festival, and was buried in a Bradford cemetery.

The City of Bradford Exhibition, held in Lister Park from May to October 1904, featured many events including a water chute into the lake, hot air balloon rides, man-lifting kites, an industrial pavilion and Buffalo Bill - the cowboy Will Cody - who staged his Wild West show.

A group of Somali warriors and their families were brought over to live in a reconstructed native village, in an attempt to educate Bradfordians on their culture and way of life.

The great exhibition, opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales, (later King George V and Queen Mary), marked the opening of Cartwright Hall, built on the site of a house owned by Samuel Cunliffe Lister, who built Manningham Mills. Lister helped fund it and gave the park to Bradford. The hall was named after Dr Edmund Cartwright, inventor of the first woolcombing machine.

This May there will be a series of celebrations marking the centenary, including special exhibitions in the gallery on aspects of the 1904 festival. Organisers hope to trace the paintings, porcelain and antique furniture from the gallery's first-ever exhibition, and a new flowerbed in the shape of a working clock - a feature of Lister Park for many years - will be installed.

Artist Alan Hydes, from Apperley Bridge, whose television series Painting the Stars was shown on ITV, has been commissioned to do a painting marking the centenary.

One of the 1904 displays was a newly-invented incubator, showing how the lives of prematurely-born babies could be saved. Babies from Bradford hospitals were laid in it and curator Christine Hopper is trying to trace their descendants for the centenary.

"There must be generations of their families still in Bradford," she said. "Such an exhibition seems strange but in those days it was fairly common. There were many of these grand exhibitions, showing the achievements of the great industrial age, in Britain, France and America."

Christine and her assistant, Farena Bashir, plan to mark the grave of a young woman who died of tubercolosis in Lister Park's makeshift Somali village.

The burial of Halimo Abdi Batel took place at Scholemoor Cemetery, it was Bradford's first ever Muslim funeral ceremony. A funeral cortege left Lister Park and went through Bradford streets.

"Her grave is unmarked but we'd like to put a tombstone there," said Christine. "We went to Scholemoor Cemetery and found the grave. We'll have a ceremony. Unfortunately, because of the conflict in Somalia, it would be extremely difficult to trace any of the woman's family."

Mr Hydes, wants to recreate the flavour of the exhibition for his painting.

"It must have been an amazing sight in Lister Park - hot air balloons, a re-enactment of a naval battle on the lake, even Buffalo Bill. These are fantastic images for an artist. I'll be drawing on all those quirky features, as well as bringing in aspects of Listers Mill," he said. "It will be an abstract work in mixed media.

"Cartwright Hall houses the work of many major artists, including David Hockney, Andy Warhol, and LS Lowry. It's known internationally as a major gallery for prints. When I was at art college it was one of the places we had to visit, along with the National Gallery and the Tate."