The following year, Rubbo commissioned Burke to curate the national touring exhibition Australian Women Artists 1840–1940.
[1][2] From 1979 to 1989, Cooke was a Lecturer in the History of Art Department at University College London, and prior to her move to the United States and appointment as curator at the Dia Art Foundation (1991 to 2008), Cooke established herself during the mid-80s as a writer on contemporary artists of the period, including British sculptors Anish Kapoor and Bill Woodrow, and American artist Allan McCollum.
[3] During her years at Dia, she has worked to bring greater recognition to women artists who contributed to the minimalist period, organising exhibitions and publishing writings on Jo Baer,[4] Louise Bourgeois, Bridget Riley, and Agnes Martin, among others, In addition to developing historical projects with artists of the established Dia collection, nearly all of whom are male and became prominent during the 1960s, she organised significant exhibitions aimed at introducing European artists of the 1980s to the American public, such as Rosemarie Trockel, Katharina Fritsch, Juan Muñoz, and Thomas Schütte.
She has written widely about contemporary art in exhibition catalogues and in Artforum, Artscribe, The Burlington Magazine, and Parkett.
Cooke was a member of the juries that selected Doris Salcedo (2016),[6] Isa Genzken (2019),[7] Michael Rakowitz (2020)[8] and Otobong Nkanga (2024)[9] for the Nasher Prize.