MIRL, the Material / Image Research Lab, studies the relationship between art objects and their images: how objects are photographed, scanned, digitized, and shared, and what is gained and lost when the material becomes digital. Our work spans art history and architecture, and joins close looking at physical objects with new digital tools.
We also support the UCSB community in working with images: managing image collections, finding instructional and research media through JSTOR, and using research tools and imaging equipment.
The lab includes digitizing equipment for two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects, a seminar room with an interactive digital projector, and a large workshop room designed for exploring physical art objects and artifacts. We host regular talks and workshops on innovative image technology applications and related Digital Humanities topics. MIRL also collaborates with other UC campuses through the UC Library Common Knowledge Group (CKG) initiative and the California Digital Library (CDL).
The facility
The seminar room can accommodate up to 20 people for discussions, online meetings, review sessions, and object-based research. It offers flexible seating and work surfaces, two dedicated workstations, a 55” monitor, interactive projection, a flatbed scanner, and a slide scanner. There is extensive wall space with panels that allow material pinning or hanging, and movable shelves, all designed for display or discussion. The room is also home to a small reference library containing survey texts and books commonly used in HAA courses.
The workshop room has been designed to support museum studies, architectural history, and other courses focused on learning through the study of materials. The room accommodates up to 30 people, with ample mobile surfaces and shelving for display. There is an adjoining temperature-controlled, secure room for safe storage of borrowed materials, and both spaces are monitored by security cameras and alarms. In addition to flexible seating and work surfaces, it is home to five workstations, a book scanner, a slide scanner, multiple 3D scanners, and a flatbed scanner.
MIRL is also home to a nascent materials and pigment library. Contact us to inquire about the materials already in the library, to borrow materials for on-campus use, or to request materials to add to the collection.
MIRL was once home to over 400,000 35mm slides used for classroom teaching. Over the last 20 years most of the slides have been removed during our transition to digital teaching and collection building. We still maintain a small collection of archival slides, primarily original photography by and from our department’s scholars and their colleagues. Over time these slides are being systematically documented, digitized, and shared online. You can view our digital collections on JSTOR.
The land
MIRL at UC Santa Barbara acknowledges that we work, learn, and create on the unceded homelands of the Chumash people, who have stewarded this land since time immemorial. We recognize the ongoing presence and leadership of Chumash communities in the Central Coast and honor their continued connection to this place, despite histories of displacement and settler-colonial violence.
As a research lab dedicated to studying materials and images, we are committed to ethical practices that respect Indigenous knowledge, cultural heritage, and sovereignty. We strive to uphold Indigenous data sovereignty principles, ensuring that Native communities retain authority over their cultural materials and narratives. Our work seeks to amplify Native voices, support Indigenous artists, and engage in meaningful collaboration with Chumash and other Native communities.
We invite all who engage with the lab to reflect on their relationship to this land and to actively support Indigenous-led efforts for land return, cultural preservation, and justice.
Object-based research and learning
Our facility was designed to support art history, museum studies, architectural history, and other courses focused on learning through the study of materials. We are currently partnered with UCSB’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum (AD&A), and we facilitate the borrowing of objects from both the architecture and design collection and the art collection, for research and pedagogical purposes.
To book the space for teaching with objects, or to borrow objects from the AD&A Museum, please email mirl@arthistory.ucsb.edu at least four weeks before the quarter begins, so there is time to arrange the loan. We are working to extend borrowing to other institutions, and are glad to answer any questions.
Room reservations
To reserve the space or a scanning station, please contact Christine Fritsch, Assistant Curator, at cfritsch@ucsb.edu or 805.893.7403. She can also answer questions about department policies and equipment.
Resources
We are the primary campus resource for image research and use. The main gateway to instructional and research media is JSTOR, which includes all Artstor holdings and Artstor functionality, and more. JSTOR now integrates access to both text and media resources.
MIRL also licenses JSTOR Digital Stewardship, which supports digital media management, and sharing via JSTOR and other platforms. Please reach out to us if you are interested in learning more about JSTOR, or JSTOR Digital Stewardship.
Internships
MIRL hosts undergraduate interns every quarter. Interns work alongside faculty and staff on live projects, and their contributions are credited. For 2026-27 we offer six internships:
California Native American Modern Art Archive. Document artworks and create metadata under consent-based protocols, for a post-custodial archive in which artists keep control of how their work is represented and shared. A good fit for art history, American Indian studies, or information studies; sensitivity to Indigenous cultural protocols is essential.
Carol J. Mackey Archive. Help bring the working archive of archaeologist Carol J. Mackey into digital form: field notes, tracing-paper drawings, slides, and photographs from her excavations at Farfán, San José de Moro, and other Andean sites. Directed by Alicia Boswell. A good fit for art history, archaeology, or anthropology.
MIRL Tools. Test MIRL’s free, browser-based instruments for documenting and defending cultural heritage, run 3D analysis on object scans, and help write documentation. A good fit for digital humanities, heritage, or software; technical comfort helps.
Eleven Days. Survey downtown Santa Barbara, trace its culverted creeks, and research city and library archives for a counter-archive of the city’s rebuilding after the 1925 earthquake, toward a public exhibition. Begins Winter 2027.
AD&A Museum / MIRL digitization. Prepare and digitize materials from the museum’s Architecture and Design Collection and Art Collection. A full-year commitment through ARTHI 192A/B, at least 6 hours a week in person. Full for 2026-27.
Curatorial internship. Work with the MIRL curator on object-based teaching: prepare class sessions with objects, care for and inventory the teaching collection and the materials and pigment library, and keep MIRL’s records. Start in any quarter.
Internships are taken through ARTHI 192C, Pass/No Pass, at 30 hours a quarter for each unit: up to 4 units a quarter and 12 in total across ARTHI 192A to 192E. Up to 4 units may count toward the Museum Studies emphasis or minor. To apply, complete the internship application form at least two months before the quarter begins. Questions: Jeff O’Brien, jeffobrien@ucsb.edu.
Guiding research questions
Our research at MIRL is informed by a series of overarching questions. These include:
- How do digital technologies bring forth new visibilities and new ways of seeing? How do new digital tools help us form emergent methodologies within the discipline?
- What constitutes an image today, and how has our conception of an image changed over the past two decades with the move from analogue to digital?
- What happens when a photograph becomes a measuring instrument: aligning a historical view to its present-day counterpart, or squaring an oblique façade to an elevation we can read and measure from?
- How can we use digital tools to locate and examine the intersection of materiality and the image? Has the turn to digital produced, paradoxically, a renewed attention to the material?
- What does the archive make visible, and what does it suppress? How do digitization practices shape our understanding of objects, collections, and cultural histories?
- What does it mean to build an archive of absence: a register of works that have been destroyed, looted, or dispersed, where the work itself survives only as a copy, or not at all?
- When images travel as evidence, from conflict zones to the courtroom, how do we preserve them with verifiable provenance while protecting the people who make and provide them?
- What is a decolonial image, and what would it mean to practise decolonization in the archive rather than merely depict it?
- How can digital and archival methods better represent, preserve, and provide access to Indigenous visual cultures and material practices, and what does it mean to build an archive in genuine partnership with Indigenous communities?
- How do we use these tools responsibly and equitably within the disciplines of art history and architecture, especially in our age of emergent artificial intelligence?
Giving
The generosity of our alumni, parents, and friends is crucial to the History of Art & Architecture Department. Your support helps fund scholarship, research, and program initiatives that enhance our curricular offerings. Whether through unrestricted gifts or contributions to specific priorities, your investment has a profound impact on our graduate and undergraduate students.
We invite you to make a gift online through our secure giving website.
For questions about customized opportunities or other kinds of giving, such as donor-advised funds, gifts of stock, establishing an endowment, or making an estate gift, please contact Dana Loughlin, Assistant Dean of Development, Humanities and Fine Arts:
(805) 893-3922 | danaloughlin@ucsb.edu
We look forward to partnering with you to achieve your philanthropic goals. Thank you for supporting the History of Art & Architecture Department.