The Red Dot

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 

  • The Davis Museum’s statement on the immigration ban

    In a comment on the current White House administration’s policies on immigration, the Davis Museum at Wellesley College has removed or covered all art in the galleries that was created by immigrants. The initiative is called Art-Less and is meant to illustrate the creative contributions made by immigrants to the US. Labels describing each piece… Read more

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  • Library of Congress digitizes rare books from the Rosenwald Collection

    The Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress has an active digitization program, sharing thousands of its treasures online for users all over the world. Their most recent announcement highlights digital additions to the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection. The Rosenwald Collection’s greatest strengths are in the fifteenth century woodcut books, early… Read more

  • The Met implements an image Open Access policy

    The Metropolitan Museum of Art took to Facebook Live today to announce their new Open Access policy, which makes images of artworks it believes to be in the public domain widely and freely available for unrestricted use, and at no cost, in accordance with the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) designation and the Terms and Conditions… Read more

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  • Help stop the elimination of the NEA and NEH

    Even before his inauguration, the new President announced his intention to eliminate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). While named as part of an effort to cut the federal budget, these two organizations (and the The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which he would privatize)… Read more

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  • Even more reasons to study art history

    Noah Charney, art historian and author, argues convincingly for the increased importance and relevance of a humanities-based education in “The art of learning: Why art history might be the most important subject you could study today” on Salon.com.  The multiple skills and interdisciplinary aspects of studying art history increase critical thinking, especially important in this age… Read more

  • Now available: Performance at Tate

    Performance at Tate: Into the Space of Art “explores the history of performance art at Tate from the 1960s to 2016. Arising from a two-year research project, this major online publication offers a new appraisal of the place of performance art and performativity in the museum through essays and case studies on individual artworks and… Read more

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