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
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Innovative museum website
The Indianapolis Museum of Art has put up a page with an innovative way to browse their collections. It’s called Tag Tours, and is based on social tagging. For example you can browse works by tags such as colour, or a variety of content subjects/themes (animals, food, sports). It’s a great way for the museum… Read more
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MIT Visualizing Cultures
The Visualizing Cultures website was launched at MIT in 2002 “to explore the potential of the Web for developing innovative image-driven scholarship and learning”. It includes essays with visual narratives which incorporate postcards, archival photography, prints, and more. The content currently focuses on the early modern history of Japan and China. Click on “Explore Content… Read more
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Great video
If you need something to relax your students before an exam, or just to make you laugh, have a look at this video for the song “70 Million”. It’s by “Hold Your Horses”, a French pop/indie group. I can’t imagine how much fun it must have been to make the video. Also a good… Read more
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Unusual Museums Department
The Museum of Broken Relationships is a great concept museum. It is based in Croatia, and is sending a collection on tour. It is currently at an Istanbul shopping mall – read more in this New York Times article. Exhibits include unopened bottles of champagne, cell phones, prosthetic legs, and more, all with great memories… Read more
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ARTstor Scheduled Maintenance Outage
Bulletin from ARTstor, just in: Please be advised, ARTstor will be performing temporary maintenance this Saturday evening, February 27th, into Sunday morning, February 28th, between the hours of 7:00 PM and 1:00 AM EST. During this time, service will be intermittently interrupted. We anticipate full service to return by 1:00 AM. If you experience any… Read more
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New use for old slides
It’s win-win – we find a good use for all the slides we’re deaccessioning, AND generate some much-needed revenue. And they’re super cute and functional! Now to find a way to buy that industrial sewing machine…. Read more