Sandra Racek

Sandra Racek is a doctoral candidate in art history at Northwestern University researching Dutch and Flemish art of the 16th and 17th centuries. Her dissertation examines artworks portraying specific narratives featuring the themes of male-female cross-dressing and asks how they engage with 17th-century debates on appearance and reality with regard to images. Her broader research interests include visual culture of Europe from 1400 to 1700, artistic exchange, court collecting, and the dynamics of viewership, gender, and identity. As the 2020–21 Mellon Foundation COSI Fellow in European Painting and Sculpture, Sandra works with curator Jacquelyn Coutré on researching provenance, conservation, and publication history for an upcoming catalogue of Dutch and Flemish paintings within the Art Institute’s collection.