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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Pacific Asia Museum now affiliated with USC
The Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena has announced its new partnership with USC. From the news release: “The new partnership will preserve the museum’s 1924 Chinese Qing Dynasty-inspired mansion in downtown Pasadena as an art museum, and will enhance the scholarship of the creative faculty and students at USC’s six arts schools and those in… Read more
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CAMIO: OCLC’s Catalog of Art Museum Images Online
CAMIO® (Catalog of Art Museum Images Online, hosted by OCLC) is an online resource for images from a number of prominant museums. You can perform searches across the site or from only a selected number of institutions, or browse by institution or work type. Every work in CAMIO is represented by at least one high-resolution… Read more
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Artists announced for Whitney Biennial 2014
The three guest curators of the 2014 Whitney Biennial—Stuart Comer (Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art, MoMA), Anthony Elms (Associate Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia), and Michelle Grabner (Artist and Professor, Painting and Drawing Department, School of the Art Institute, Chicago)—have announced the artists who will participate in next year’s exhibition. Each curator… Read more
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The price of art in perspective
A Francis Bacon triptych (above – portraits of Lucien Freud) sold yesterday at auction for $142.4 million setting the record for art auction sales (it was estimated at $85 million). The previous record was set last year for Edvard Munch’s The Scream, which went for $120 million. You can watch a video of the Bacon… Read more
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Largest trove of Nazi-stolen art found in Munich apartment
In a story over 70 years in the making, over 1,500 works of art — some known to have been confiscated by the Nazis and in total now worth about $1.3 billion — have been found in the apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, the 80-year-old son of a well-known Nazi-era art dealer. What has compounded the… Read more
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LAX, a contemporary art space
In an effort to expand its public art program, LAX has installed Influx: Art at LAX, the “first-ever public art festival” of eleven new temporary art installations scattered throughout the airport. Some spaces are viewable only to ticketed passengers while others are open to the public. In all, the project contributes to “nearly doubling its… Read more