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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Most complete topographic map of Earth published
This week NASA and ASTER (Japan’s Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) released a new and more complete digital topographic map of Earth. Best of all, it is available online to users everywhere at no cost. NASA’s press release is here, with links to downloading the ASTER global digital elevation model Read more
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accessCeramics: a successful collaborative image project
Accessceramics.org is a collaborative database project which allows users to contribute images of contemporary ceramics for educational purposes. It was started by Ted Vogel and Margo Ballantyne at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, and it uses Flickr image software to upload, organize and display the images. It can be browsed by artist name, media,… Read more
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A helpful digitization site
Make it Digital: This new site, provided by the New Zealand government, includes loads of helpful hints and answers to difficult questions about how to digitize (technically, legally, aesthetically). Read more
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East African photo collection now online
The Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs, housed in the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University, is now online and accessible to the public. This rare collection includes roughly 7,610 photographs, 230 glass lantern slides, and various additional materials from 1860 to 1960. Read more
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Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz online exhibitions
The Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz announced a new online exhibition on The Cloister of Monreale. The exhibition offers general views of the cloister but it’s the extensive details of the capitals that make it worth seeing. Clicking on each detail opens a bit bigger image, but to get an even better view, follow the “full-size”… Read more
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New Acropolis Museum opens
After years of planning, and decades of debate, The New Acropolis Museum opened its doors on Saturday. The concrete and glass museum, designed by Bernard Tschumi, stands near the foot of the Acropolis and offers a view of the Parthenon — a visual argument by the Greek government that the Parthenon sculptures (previously known as… Read more