[4] Cook received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1924, his dissertation was titled, Romanesque Panel Painting in Catalonia (1924).
[3] By 1935, he was made a director of the graduate center and started recruiting eminent art history professors that were fleeing Germany (as Adolf Hitler's leadership was growing).
[3][6] Some of those recruited professors were in a visiting scholar or temporary appointment capacity, these included Erwin Panofsky, Walter Friedlaender, Karl Leo Heinrich Lehmann, Martin Weinberger, Adolph Goldschmidt, Otto Homburger, Marcel Aubert, Henri Focillon, Alfred Salmony, Rudolf Wittkower, Jurgis Baltrušaitis, Wolfgang Lotz, among others.
In 1950, Cook and José Gudiol Ricart issued Pintura e Imagineria Romanicas for the important Ars Hispaniae book series.
[3] Cook built up the photographic archive of Spanish manuscripts at the Frick Art Reference Library Photoarchive in New York City.