[4] Crookshank spent the first five years of life in India where her father was engaged in geographical survey work in the central provinces.
She then attended the Courtauld Institute under Anthony Blunt, where she wrote her thesis on the drawings of George Romney, before gaining her first employment at the Tate Gallery.
[4] Upon leaving the Tate she took up a position at the Courtauld Institute's Witt Library before her appointment as Keeper of Art at the Belfast Museum and Gallery in 1957.
[1] Crookshank was an active member of the Irish Georgian Society for more than fifty years, and it was there that she was to meet her long time collaborator Desmond Fitzgerald, the Knight of Glin.
She travelled the length and breadth of Ireland to rediscover lost artists and paintings, firmly establishing the history of Irish art within a wider European context.
She was also one of a select few responsible for setting up and managing the ROSC exhibitions of international modern art in the period spanning from 1967 until 1988.
[6] Crookshank died in Áras Uí Dhomhnaill Nursing Home, Milford after a long illness, in the autumn of 2016.