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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Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History: The New Edition
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has launched an updated Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History: The New Edition with a new navigation and interface, updated images, and restructured editorial content. The Timeline is still relational but now with a seamless browsing experience and easily accessible on any device, anywhere. The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History presents a chronological,… Read more
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Artstor image download improvements
Artstor just announced that with the latest system update users can now download individual images as JPGs – they are no longer zip files, which means you save a step. The second bit of good news is that the embedded metadata function is now working, so that information travels with the downloaded image. You can… Read more
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The Museum of Lost Objects
In the ancient city of Nineveh, a statue of a winged bull survived undamaged for 2,700 years – until IS took a pneumatic drill to it last year (see above). With hundreds of thousands of lives lost, millions of people displaced and some of the world’s most significant heritage sites destroyed, the wars in Iraq… Read more
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Happy 100th Birthday, Dada!
February 2016 marks a full century since the term “Dada” was first coined at Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich. via A.V. Club; for resources on Dada, visit here and here PS: It’s not a very festive birthday for the Cabaret Voltaire, however, as its future is uncertain Read more
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GRI releases Getty Scholars’ Workspace
The Getty Research Institute has released a wonderful open-source (and free) collaborative research tool called Getty Scholars’ Workspace. It allows users to save and annotate images (from the Getty as well as other sources), construct text and bibliographies, and best of all to share saved content with others. This has great potential for student assignments… Read more
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LACMA promised John Lautner-designed house
What do The Big Lebowski, Rihanna, and James Turrell have in common? LACMA, of course! The museum announced that fashion and basketball aficionado James Goldstein promised the gift of his John Lautner-designed home, its contents, and the surrounding estate, nestled in the hills above the city. Featuring an iconic angular roof and expansive views of… Read more