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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Ernst L. Freud: Architect to the Bourgeoisie of Weimar Germany
Update to our post from December 2011 on the recent publication by UCSB architectural historian Prof. Volker Welter, Ernst L. Freud, Architect: The Case of the Modern Bourgeois Home: A new essay in the online journal Berfrois (“Intellectual Jousting in the Republic of Letters”) elaborates with a personal angle. Read more
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Updates to Ghent Altarpiece project
We reported a while back that the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK/IRPA), Lukasweb, and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, in collaboration with the Getty Foundation, was digitizing the Ghent Altarpiece in extremely high definition. In addition to making the digital images of the finished panels available, the project has used Infrared Reflectography (IRR) and x-radiography… Read more
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340-ton boulder on its way to LACMA
The 10-day journey begins tonight for the huge boulder from a Riverside quarry destined as the centerpiece of Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass at LACMA. It is so huge it has to travel on a custom-built transporter that requires road and utility accommodations throughout the trip (it’s nearly 3 traffic lanes wide!), and must take a… Read more
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AD&A Museum’s Cliff May exhibition opens February 26
UCSB’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum has been going through an inside-and-out renovation and is ready to open its doors with Carefree California: Cliff May and the Romance of the Ranch House. The exhibition is the first major retrospective of the designer who popularized the ranch house and made it an icon of casual California… Read more
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Gothic Past: A visual archive of medieval Ireland
Gothic Past is an open-access resource of over 3000 images for the study of medieval Irish architecture and sculpture. You can search the site or browse by tag, collection or online exhibition. It is part of a research project in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, Trinity College Dublin. Read more
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MOCA announces tribute to Mike Kelley
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles will open an exhibition to celebrate the work and legacy of Mike Kelley, who died this month. The exhibition will showcase Kelley’s work in the museum’s permanent collection along with other artists’ works donated by Kelley. The show, A Tribute to Mike Kelley, opens this Saturday at MOCA… Read more