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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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
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Livestream of Digital Art History symposium on Feb. 22
The Wired! Group at Duke University is hosting and livestreaming a symposium on Monday, Feb. 22, called “Apps, Maps & Models: Digital Pedagogy and Research in Art History, Archaeology & Visual Studies”. The focus is on the use of digital tools in art historical and archaeological research. The sessions run 9am-1pm and 2-5pm (Note that… Read more
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Yale Center for British Art adds 1000s of new hi-res images
The Yale Center for British Art has just released more than 22,000 additional high-resolution images through its online collection. To date, the Center has made more than 69,000 images freely available online. This most recent release was made in conjunction with Public Domain Day, and while most of the artworks themselves are not new entries… Read more
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A lovely marriage of Dutch painting and digital magic
This little video is quite a dreamy thing – digital animations of several Rijksmuseum paintings. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDdZIi175sw] A company named CS Digital Media created these animations as large scale “digital posters” to recognize the anniversary of the Rijksmuseum renovation. (They were on display in various Amsterdam metro stations, unfortunately only for a week.) You can… Read more
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Digital Public Library of America: A wealth of info, no card required
The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is an all-digital library that aggregates metadata — or information describing an item — and thumbnails for millions (over 11,000,000 and growing!) of photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States. DPLA brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums,… Read more
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Digital archive of vernacular art sites
SPACES (Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments) recently launched a digital archive of more than 1,400 vernacular and self-taught art environments around the world and continue to expand their holdings by soliciting new documentation and writing about the sites, and sharing resources and updates on the preservation and conservation of threatened vernacular art sites.… Read more