Named after the small red sticker that once guided scholars through legacy 35mm slides, The Red Dot is here to help you navigate the ever-evolving landscape of visual and material research. While rooted in the University of California, Santa Barbara community, our posts are open to all.
At MIRL, we engage with art history, digital humanities, and material culture through hands-on research and archival projects. Guided by our core principles—critical engagement with visual and material culture, ethical stewardship of images and data, and innovative approaches to research and pedagogy—we work at the intersection of technology and the humanities. We are especially interested in how digital tools can expand the study of images, objects, and spaces.
Here, we’ll share insights on Digital Art History and Architectural History, highlight new image and data resources, discuss copyright and ethical considerations, and spotlight events that shape our field.
The Red Dot © 2025 is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
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The Public Domain Review
Ever wonder how you can efficiently find texts and visual media in the public domain? One helpful source is The Public Domain Review, a project of the Open Knowledge Foundation “dedicated to showcasing the most interesting and unusual out-of-copyright works available online.” Browse the site’s articles or collections by media type and sign up to… Read more
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Celebrating the Armory Show centenary
The International Exhibition of Modern Art was held at the 69th Infantry Regiment Armory in New York between February 17 – March 15, 1913 and made a deep and wide impact on American art and its viewing public. Some interesting websites on the exhibition’s 100th anniversary include: 1913 Armory Show: the Story in Primary Sources:… Read more
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Delacroix painting vandalized
Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830) has been defaced by a 28-year-old woman who wrote “AE911” across a roughly foot-long section along the bottom. The painting has been in the Louvre-Lens since the satellite museum opened December. The tag refers to the 9/11 conspiracy website Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. via Reuters Read more
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NMC Horizon Report on higher ed and technology
The NMC Horizon Report > 2013 Higher Education Edition “describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, a decade-long research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in higher education.” The report is available here, as well as the working “short list” from… Read more
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US Holocaust Museum’s digital collection
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s digital collection — so far, that’s 217,630 records — is available to search online. There are some useful searching tips on the online collection homepage or try browsing within the three set “facets”: record type (e.g., oral history, photograph, document), language, or special collection. Other special features include links… Read more
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New online resource for Gothic architecture
The team at the Media Center for Art History at Columbia University have, over the past five years, put together a wonderful catalogue of photos, drawings, and plans of French Gothic architecture. The site, Mapping Gothic France, lets the end user explore the content through the dimensions of Space, Time and Narrative. The site also… Read more