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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Getty Provenance Index® Databases adds art sales records
The Getty Provenance Index® has added 138,000 database records of art sales from the 1600s and 1700s, including the earliest known catalog published in Britain. This brings the cumulative Databases holdings to more than 1.7 million records taken from source material such as archival inventories, auction catalogs, and dealer stock books. Quantity and scope of… Read more
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Virtual tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s David and Gladys Wright House
The David and Gladys Wright House is temporarily closed for public tours, but don’t let that stop you from exploring the site through a new virtual tour. The virtual tour of the house, originally built for FLW’s son and his wife, begins with interactive floor plans of the main house and guest house, each of… Read more
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Pharos: The International Consortium of Photo Archives
PHAROS is an international consortium of fourteen European and North American art historical photo archives committed to creating a digital platform, currently in beta, that allows research among the photographic holdings of all consortium members – an estimated 31 million images, including artworks and supplemental material. One of the best searching features they’re working on is… Read more
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Artstor launches over 35,000 images by Andy Warhol
Artstor announced The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has now made available more than 35,000* images in the Artstor Digital Library. These two extensive collections – Warhol’s Oeuvre and Photographic Legacy Project – provide a thorough presentation of Warhol’s works for the first time, including more than 34,000 original Andy Warhol photographs as well as paintings,… Read more
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CAA Arts and Humanities Advocacy Toolkit
As we reported in January, the College Art Association released a statement condemning the proposed budget cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among other federal agencies. Now they’ve created an Advocacy Toolkit “to help our members and anyone who wants to advocate for the arts and… Read more
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Getty’s first online exhibition preserves Palmyra
The Getty Research Institute‘s inaugural digital exhibition, The Legacy of Ancient Palmyra, was developed “as a tribute to Palmyra” with images by traveling artists and explorers who documented the site in former states of preservation. “Their works contribute to Palmyra’s legacy, one that goes far beyond the stones of its once great buildings.” There are… Read more