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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New Open Content at the GRI
Last year we reported on the Open Content project at the Getty Research Institute. In an exciting update the GRI just announced the addition of 77,000 new images. The bulk of these are from the Foto Arte Minore collection: photographs of art and architecture in Italy by Max Hutzel. These photos, shot in the 1950s… Read more
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Antiquities and repatriation
There was a good article in the New York Times last week on the many facets of repatriation of looted artifacts. Some cases involve pressure from countries of origin and lengthy legal battles, such as that surrounding the Euphronius Krater, left, which spent many years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art before travelling back to… Read more
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Tate announces online access to Audio Arts
The Tate announced the online availability of Audio Arts, an “audio cassette-magazine” established by artist Bill Furlong in 1972, that contains interviews, soundworks, readings, lectures and other events with and about modern and contemporary artists. The online resource features all the published versions of Audio Arts — which was in publication for 33 years in 24 volumes,… Read more
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RM Schindler’s Bethlehem Baptist Church Open House, April 12, 2014
Rudolph Michael Schindler’s Bethlehem Baptist Church, which had been boarded up for years and deteriorating from neglect despite its “Historic-Cultural Monument” status, has been given a new life. The church, originally built in 1944 with a minor budget for a congregation on Compton Avenue in South LA, has a new congregation, Faith Build International. To… Read more
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And this is why you don’t touch things in museums, Part 2
We all know not to touch works of art in museums. Or, at least most of us know this. A student on a quest for a fabulous selfie, however, seems to have missed that lesson: the student, who was visiting the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, climbed onto a sculpture of the “Drunken Satyr,”… Read more
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A recommendation for “Tim’s Vermeer”
Tim’s Vermeer recently played in Santa Barbara at the film festival. It’s a documentary about Tim Jenison, a Texas optics engineer who long wondered how Vermeer managed to achieve such a “photographic” and light-infused effect in his paintings. He develops an interesting theory, and sets about recreating The Music Lesson using a method he thinks… Read more