Milda Richardson’s research interests focus on 19th- and 20th-century art, as well as design, folk art, architecture and issues relating to cultural landscape. Her chapter on “The Nexus between Lithuanian Vernacular and Modernism,” is forthcoming in Twentieth Century Sacred Architecture in America, Anat Geva, editor (London: Routledge, 2018). In her chapter “Iconoclasm and Resistance: Wayside Shrines in the Struggle for Lithuanian Independence,” which appeared in Architecture and Armed Conflict: The Politics of Destruction (London: Routledge, 2014), she analyzed this unique folk art from both an anthropological and political perspective.
In 2016 Dr. Richardson was invited by the McMullen Museum at Boston College to lecture on “Maginnis, Ireland and Pugin”. She also delivered a paper on “Chester F. Wright (1899-1969) and Modern Sacred Space, at the Wellesley-Deerfield Symposium on Modernism in New England.
Dr. Richardson is currently writing a monograph on the Boston firm of Maginnis & Walsh, the leading 20th century American ecclesiastical architects closely associated with the Arts & Crafts Movement. Her chapter in The Makers of Trinity Church… examines Charles D. Maginnis’s redesign for the chancel space of H.H. Richardson’s iconic building and places the chancel and its liturgical arts within the context of 20th-century design.
In order to better understand how art and language intersect, Dr. Richardson collaborated on an English translation of Le Lingue Baltiche by the Italian philologist Pietro U. Dini. The translation, Foundations of Baltic Languages, was published by Vilnius University Press, 2014.
She created and led the first Northeastern Dialogue to Lithuania under the title “From Pagan Past to Global Future: The Arts of Lithuania”.
Dr. Richardson’s professional experience in diversity training and educational management infuses her teaching with an interdisciplinary perspective. In 2017 she was appointed a member of the Research Council of Lithuania, Counsellor of the Lithuanian Parliament. She serves on the Research, Policy and Analysis Division as well as the Social Sciences and Humanities Committee.
