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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NY Public Library offers 180,000 public domain images
The New York Public Library announced it now offers 180,000 images in their NYPL Digital Collections of library materials in the public domain. These images can be downloaded in the highest resolution available and “everyone has the freedom to enjoy and reuse these materials in almost limitless ways.” In fact, it’s encouraged. via ARTnews Read more
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Art auction quiz
The New York Times has a quiz today, “Are You Smarter than a Billionaire?” which asks you to guess which item, in a pair from this week’s auction sales, got the highest price. There are some surprises. To help get you in the right frame of price reference: the Modigliani below fetched $170 million. Read more
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10,000 architectural views, plans and drawings added to Artstor
Artstor just announced the unveiling of a valuable new addition to their collection: 10,000 architectural photos, plans, sections, and other drawings. And this is just phase I – the collection will be doubling in size. This new content comes via a collaboration with the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and the Avery… Read more
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LA museums embracing digital innovations
Culture Monster highlights innovative examples of how various museums in Los Angeles are using digital technology: Natural History Museum of Los Angeles: Interactive CT scans offer another way to access mummies Autry National Center: In the exhibition space, first-person stories of characters features in the “Civil War” exhibit play as films from user-activated “daguerreotypes” (and,… Read more
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New US history photo and news archives
An LA Times article today highlights two archives of great interest to students of US history: Photogrammar and Chronicling America. Photogrammar is based at Yale University, and contains 170,000 photos commissioned by the US Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information between 1935 and 1945. The photographs are actually housed at the Library… Read more
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Open Access Week at Davidson Library
Open Access Week is an annual international event that promotes open access as a new norm in research and scholarship. Please join us for any or all of the Library’s Open Access Week programs to learn about trends and challenges in scholarly publishing. Programs held during the week include: Reinventing Scholarly Publishing: UC Press. Monday,… Read more