Lynne Cooke is a former senior curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Art. She holds a PhD from London University, an MA from the Courtauld Institute, and a BA from Melbourne University. Cooke joined the National Gallery in 2012 as Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, conducting research for Outliers and American Vanguard Art, an exhibition about the relationship between mainstream and self-taught artists in the United States from the early twentieth century to the present. She was previously deputy director and chief curator at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain (2008–2012); curator at the Dia Art Foundation in New York (1991–2008); artistic director at the 10th Biennale of Sydney (1994–1996); co-curator of 1991 Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh; and lecturer in the history of art at University College, London University. She has also taught at Yale University, Malmö Art Academy, CCS, Bard College, and La Trobe University. In 2023, Cooke curated Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, which opened at LACMA in Los Angeles and then toured in North America. Among the numerous exhibitions she has organized are Cristina Iglesias: A Place of Reflection; Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos; Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964–1977; Francis Alÿs: Fabiola; Zoe Leonard: You See I Am Here After All; and Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years. Cooke has received numerous awards and has contributed to catalogues on artists including Alighiero Boetti, James Castle, James Coleman, Sonia Delaunay, Ann Hamilton, and Tacita Dean.