Critic Jon Beasley-Murray writes in a review of her work that "Nelly Richard has been for over two decades the most tireless campaigner and theorist for the potential and role of art, first in dictatorial and then in postdictatorial Chile, and more broadly in the current neoliberal and postideological condition that first emerged under General Augusto Pinochet but now affects us all.
"[1] Richard has been important in disseminating the work of contemporary thinkers and writers such as Beatriz Sarlo, Néstor García Canclini, Jacques Derrida, Ernesto Laclau, Frederic Jameson, Jesús Martín Barbero, and Diamela Eltit throughout Latin America.
Marisol Vera, editorial director of Cuarto Proprio, writes in the introduction to the 1994 edition La insubordinación de los signos that "her texts, and their attendant discussions, enable a field of inquiry that are vital for cultural reflection and critical debate in the post-transition years.
"[2] In the introduction to the English translation of La insubordinación de los signos, Alice A. Nelson and Silvia R. Tandeciarz write that Richard's work is located at "the intersection of literary criticism, art history, aesthetics, philosophy, and feminist theory.
Among them is the Chilean presence at the 1982 Paris Biennale, the journals CAL and La Separata, and editions from the galleries Cromo and Sur After the transition to democracy, Richard was founding director of the Revista de Crítica Cultural until it ceased publication in 2008.