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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Amateur restoration gone wrong
An elderly parishioner from the Sanctuary of Mercy Church, Borja, Spain, took it upon herself to “restore” one of the church’s beloved 19th-century frescoes -– Ecce Homo by Elias Garcia Martinez. The unhappy results can be seen in the before-and-after images, and in the aftermath of the incident the work now has a new nickname:… Read more
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Petition: Save a Frank Lloyd Wright house
The Frank Lloyd Wright Conservancy has set up an ONLINE PETITION to help urge Phoenix in designating the David S. and Gladys Wright House (Arcadia, 1950) as a historical landmark. A unique residence created for Wright’s son, the house is at risk of demolition by developers. The spiral design predates the Guggenheim by six years and… Read more
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Walters Art Museum images via Wikimedia
Last year we reported that the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore offers thousands of images from its collection on its website, free to download and use for educational purposes (under a Creative Commons license). More recently, the museum teamed up with Wikimedia Commons to donate more than 19,000 freely-licensed images from its permanent collection that… Read more
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UK’s National Portrait Gallery offers free digital images
The National Portrait Gallery in London now provides free downloads of a large range of images from its Collection for academic and non-commercial projects. Over 53,000 low-resolution images are now available free of charge to non-commercial users through a standard Creative Commons license. In addition, over 87,000 high-resolution images are also free for academic use… Read more
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Invention and Tradition: The Art of Southeastern Nigeria
Herbert “Skip” Cole, UCSB Professor Emeritus of African Art, has announced a new publication Invention and Tradition: The Art of Southeastern Nigeria (Prestel Press). The book “celebrates and explores the sculpture and masks of the many diverse ethnic groups living in Southeastern Nigeria.” For other faculty publication posts, click here and here. Read more
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New dangers to African artifacts
There was a sobering article in the New York Times this weekend about the destruction and looting of African artifacts and archeological sites, primarily in Mali. The author, Holland Cotter, notes that in addition to good old fashioned looting, Al Qaeda-related Islamist groups are destroying sites on fundamentalist religious grounds. He outlines the movement… Read more