Graduate Student
Heidi Cook
Advisor(s): Barbara McCloskey
Heidi Cook is a PhD candidate in the history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. She specializes in the modern art, architecture, design, and cultural history of Central Europe. Her work highlights visual constructions of nationalisms and other political identities. Her dissertation is titled “Picturing Peasants: Maksimilijan Vanka’s folkloric paintings and the ‘Croatian question’ from Habsburg Empire to Croatian Nation-State.” Her project uses the work of Croatian artist Maksimilijan Vanka to explore how the production, circulation, and reception of objects and images related to Croatian folk culture played an active role in national and imperial imaginings in early twentieth-century Yugoslavia. She was awarded an American Councils Title VIII Fellowship to fund her dissertation research in Zagreb, Croatia during the 2013-2014 academic year. She is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Art (Art History) and Visiting Director of the University Art Gallery at Truman State University.
Education
PhD, University of Pittsburgh, Department of History of Art and Architecture, in progress
MA, University of Pittsburgh, Department of History of Art and Architecture, 2011
BA in German and art history, Truman State University, 2007
Selected Publications
“Peasants and Politics: Croatian Ethnography and Nationalism in the Work of Maksimilijan Vanka,” in Athanor XXX, ed. Allys Palladino-Craig, 75-81. Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University, 2012.
“Antonius Höckelmann,” “Jörg Immendorff,” and “Herta Müller.” In The Immediate Touch: German, Austrian, and Swiss Drawings from Saint Louis Collections, 1946 – 2007, edited by Francesca Herndon-Consagra and Sydney Norton, 78, 80, 97. Saint Louis: Saint Louis Art Museum, 2008. Published in conjunction with the exhibition shown at the Saint Louis Museum of Art from June 29 – September 7, 2008.
Selected Awards
Andrew Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh, 2014-2015
American Councils Title VIII Combined Research and Language Training Fellowship, Zagreb, Croatia, 2013-2014
Foreign Language and Area Studies Academic-year Fellowship for Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, University of Pittsburgh, CREES, 2011-2013
Friends of Frick Fine Arts Travel Grant, for research at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, summer 2012
Dean’s Dissertation Development Grant, for research in Vienna and Zagreb, summer 2011
Selected Conferences
Chair of panel “Old Country in the New Country: Exhibitions, Museums, and Early Twentieth-Century American Immigration,” College Art Association Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., February 2016
“Transplanted Croatian Works in Maksimilijan Vanka's Millvale Murals,” Southeastern College Art Conference, Pittsburgh, October 2015
“Ljubo Babić and the Nationalization of Croatian Art,” Graduate Organization for the Study of Europe and Central Asia Annual Symposium, University of Pittsburgh, February 2015
“Picturing Peasants: Croatian Folk Culture and National Imagining at the 1928 Zagreb Trade Fair,” GOSECA Annual Symposium, University of Pittsburgh, February 2014
“The Independent State of Croatia’s Vanishing Image of the Peasant,” Nationalsozialismus und Regionalbewusstsein im östlichen Europa, Ideologie – Machtausbau – Beharrung, Embassy of Slovak Republic, Berlin, October 24-25, 2013
