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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Nationalmuseum, Stockholm launches free digital journal
The Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum, Stockholm is now a digital-only journal and available to download and read free of charge. The academic journal, with articles relating to Nationalmuseum’s collections, will now be accessible through the DiVA portal and the museum’s own website. via Artdaily Read more
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Dallas Museum of Art’s committment to Open Access of art and data
The Dallas Museum of Art has begun its digital database redesign for online access to the Museum’s entire collection of more than 22,000 objects. The DMA asserts this ongoing project will create “one of the world’s most sophisticated online art collections” that will offer not only high-resolution images, but “whenever permitted by existing agreements, the… Read more
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New finding aids and inventories from Dumbarton Oaks
The Dumbarton Oaks’ Image Collections and Fieldwork Archives (ICFA) has published several new finding aids for collections in their online inventory of archival and photographic holdings, AtoM@DO. These holdings include a wide range of topics, including Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art and architecture, prehistoric sites in eastern Turkey and gardens in the United Kingdom. via ICFA Read more
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Architecture books now free online
Statistics show that an ever increasing number of people are choosing to read books on a device rather than in print form. In that vein, you can now read these classic works of architectural literature for free online from sources like Internet Archive and Google Books. via ArchDaily Read more
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Damien Hirst to build his own city
Artist Damien Hirst has been given permission to construct his own city, to be called Damien-on-Sea, on the North Devon coast of England. The city will be built from the ground up, including 75 “affordable” homes to be built over the next 10-15 years. Given that this is the man who encrusted a human skull… Read more
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Interactive WWI and WWII photographs
The Red Dot folk like “Then and Now” photographs, and the Guardian has a regular series we enjoy. They are primarily photos from World Wars I and II, such as these 0f WWI Western Front sites (this is the Vareddes Town Hall in France), but they have also done some pre- and post-hurricane photos,… Read more