The Red Dot takes its name from the small sticker that once marked slides in a physical archive, flagging them as worth a second look. We’re keeping that spirit alive here.
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.
The Red Dot © 2025 is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
-
More digital resources for British history
In honor of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, two sites have launched with images from Britain’s past. Queen Victoria’s Journals, through the efforts of the Royal Archives and the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, is an interactive site with online digital images of every page in the entire sequence of Queen Victoria’s diaries from 1832-1840.… Read more
-
Happy Anniversary, first Web photo
Today is the 20th anniversary of the first photo to have been uploaded to the Web (pictured left). Its cultural and artistic merit speaks for itself. Read more about the story behind the photo here. hat tip to Alex Nichols Read more
-
Ottoman miniatures meet Hollywood film
Turkish student Murat Palta has done something very creative for his senior thesis project – he merged the language of Hollywood film posters with Ottoman miniature paintings. He has captured the compositional style, colours and patterns, and general authentic “look” of the miniatures. Capturing a moment of high tension and drama from the films (Goodfellas,… Read more
-
Bad news for antiquities collectors
The New York Times published an interesting article today about the ever-tightening restrictions on selling and donating antiquities that lack adequate provenance. On one side are the supporters of laws intended to prevent the looting of archeological sites and illegal selling or trading of antiquities. On the other side are collectors and dealers (and organizations… Read more
-
Gallery of Lost Art
A new online exhibition, Lost Art, “explores the stories behind the loss of some of the most significant works of modern and contemporary art.” The works of art shown are not only those stolen, but also those which have been destroyed by disasters or neglect, and are all in various states of “loss” — temporary… Read more
-
Britain from Above offers historic aerial photographs
The digital project Britain from Above currently contains over 16,000 images (taken between 1919-1953) from the Aerofilms Collection, an important and early aerial photography collection in the United Kingdom. Browse images by group, location or tags, or search by coordinates, date, or text. Users are free to download images or add tags; in fact, the… Read more