The Red Dot takes its name from the small sticker that once marked slides in a physical archive, flagging them as worth a second look. We’re keeping that spirit alive here.
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.
The Red Dot © 2025 is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
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Sistine Chapel rented for corporate event
Yes, you read that right. The Sistine Chapel can be rented out for select corporate charity events as a part of Pope Francis’ “Art for Charity” initiative. The first takers: Porsche. On Saturday, October 18, 2014, forty of the car maker’s enthusiasts paid $5,900 per head to be among the first group of people treated… Read more
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Open Access Program coming to Davidson Library
Open Access Week — October 20-30 — is an annual global event, promoting open access as a new norm in research and scholarship and to raise awareness of trends in scholarly communication and publishing. The program at UCSB will include these events: Generation Open Webcast & Pizza Party, Monday, October 20, 12pm Graduate students are… Read more
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Screening of “Art & Craft” on Oct. 15
Art and Craft is a documentary about prolific art forger Mark Landis, an odd duck in the world of forgery as he is not in it for the money. The film screens on Wed., Oct. 15 only, at 5:00 and 7:30pm at the Plaza de Oro cinema (map). Read about the film here, and the… Read more
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Images of Africa exhibition now at UCSB Library Special Collections
Images of Africa, curated by David C. Tambo (retired Head of Special Collections) and Edward Fields (Special Collections Reading Room Manager and IS Supervisor), is on view in Davidson Library’s Special Collections (Third Floor) through January 2015. The exhibition showcases maps from as early as the 17th century, photograph collections dating to the latter 19th… Read more
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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