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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Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 years later
In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, a pair of thieves disguised as Boston police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and roamed the Museum’s galleries, stealing thirteen works of art. To revisit this unfortunate anniversary, the Gardner Museum has teamed up with the Google Art Project to create Isabella Stewart Gardner… Read more
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When prints are performance: A panoramic funeral fit for a duke
To commemorate the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo, the National Portrait Gallery in London is offering a viewing of The Funeral Procession of Arthur, Duke of Wellington, by Henry Alken and George Augustus Sala, 1853. This magnificent panorama, measuring 20.6 meters (67 feet), will be displayed in its entirety for the first time as… Read more
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Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon at UCSB Arts Library
Planned to coincide with International Women’s Day, there will be a Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon 2:30 – 6:00 pm on Sunday, March 8, in Seminar Room 2406 on the 2nd Floor of the Arts Library on the UCSB campus. UCSB is just one of over 70 venues participating this weekend and everyone is welcome — no… Read more
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Using Thinglink for teaching and student projects
A few years ago we posted on an online tool called Thinglink, which facilitates the annotation of online images. It’s got great potential for study pages and student projects so we thought it was worth re-visiting with these examples. Instructors and students can get free accounts. In addition to adding text annotations, you can add… Read more
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Mapping LA’s Historic Places
The Los Angeles Office of Historic Resources (OHR) has partnered with the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) to create and launch HistoricPlacesLA: Los Angeles Historic Resources Inventory, the “first online information and management system specifically created to help inventory, map, describe, and protect Los Angeles’ significant cultural resources.” HistoricPlacesLA is published through Arches, a open-source geospatial… Read more
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Preserving and capturing objects with the Endangered Archives Programme
The Endangered Archives Programme, hosted by the British Library and funded by Arcadia, is celebrating its 10th anniversary as a contributor to the preservation of archival material that is in danger of destruction, neglect or physical deterioration world-wide. The Programme depends entirely upon researchers, archivists and librarians with an interest in a specific subject, region or… Read more