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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Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest on Flickr
Steve Tatum, Visual Resources Curator at Virginia Tech, has taken some beautiful and instructional images of Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, the president’s personal retreat near Forest, VA, and has uploaded them on Flickr. The estate, begun 1805 or 1806, is being extensively restored in the same order that Jefferson built it. These photos show the… Read more
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Artists go to Obama for copyright support
Over 11,000 visual artists, authors, filmmakers, architects and other artists who are part of the Copyright Alliance have signed a letter sent to the Obama administration asking for stronger copyright policy and support. Read more about the movement at the Copyright Alliance. And you can read the full text of the letter here, which highlights… Read more
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Recent ARTstor collection releases and agreements
ARTstor has announced that 833 images (69% of the roughly 1,200 projected total) from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum are now available in the Digital Library [keyword search: okeeffemuseum]. Additionally, agreements have been reached with the following institutions and should be available by April (all image counts are approximate): Diego Rivera at the Detroit Institute of… Read more
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Leonardo da Vinci in Los Angeles
The Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles will host a short-run exhibition that features a rare showing of Leonardo’s drawing Angel in the Flesh (c. 1513-1515). Also included will be selections from Leonardo’s The Theatre Sheet (c. 1506-1508, from the Atlanticus Codex) and video artist Bill Viola’s installation The Last Angel (2002). Opening night, scholar… Read more
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SAHARA and ARTstor
ARTstor has partnered with SAHARA (Society of Architectural Historians Architecture Resources Archive) to include SAH members’ photography. While much of this collection has only been available to SAH members, a large selection, called “Editor’s Choice” is now available to all ARTstor licensors. The SAHARA collection in ARTstor now has nearly 9,000 images, and 72 new… Read more