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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Ingres at the Norton Simon
The Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena has announced that Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s Comtesse d’Haussonville (1845) has arrived on loan from The Frick Collection in New York. The portrait, the first loan from the Frick in an art exchange program between the two institutions, will be exhibited October 30, 2009–January 25, 2010. The loan is also… Read more
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Archivision Module 4 now available through ARTstor too
The architectural holdings available to us keep getting better! The Archivision base collection, and modules 1 and 2, have been available in ARTstor to all UC campuses for a few months. Module 4 is the group of 6,000 images that we’ve had available through MDID only (the license for which was won at the VRA… Read more
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Alka Patel’s collection now available in ARTstor
Professor Alka Patel of UC Irvine has worked with ARTstor and UCI VRC staff to contribute over 7,000 of her field research images to the main ARTstor collection. These include the art and architecture of South Asia and Cuba. Read more about the content of this new addition here. This is an important project for… Read more
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ARTMargins Journal on East European Visual Culture
ARTMargins is an online journal devoted to Contemporary Central and East European Visual Culture. Founded in 1999 and published three times a year, it is managed by staff at The Hungarian University of Fine Arts and University of California, Santa Barbara – our own Sven Spieker is the Editor. There are wonderfully diverse articles on… Read more
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Art Historians of Southern California Annual meeting on Nov. 7
THE ART HISTORIANS of SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (AHSC) November 7, 2009 at 9:00 am Occidental College, Weingart Hall Program includes lunch and reception. RSVP for further information to Rachel Pinto at eaurae@gmail.com Full program is available here. Directions to Occidental College here. Read more