 Cronin won the Rome Prize for her series on Harriet Hosmer, an American expatriate who moved to Rome in 1852 and subsequently became known as the first professional woman sculptor The result of her research that year was the production of a catalogue raisonné for which Cronin took on the roles of historian, artist and curator as she herself compiled art historical research on Hosmer, illustrated the book with her own watercolors and wrote descriptions of each work.As Maura Reilly, founding curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, writes, Cronin's complex role as an artist raises questions such as "in choosing a female artist, one who was famous in her day yet relatively unknown today, Cronin's deconstructivist project diverges from her previous interventionist project, "Memorial To A Marriage".With the Hosmer project she is highlighting instead the canon of art history's exclusions and inclusions, thereby figuring forth its discriminatory practices and sexist foundations that make it acceptable for certain artists – male – to be raised to the canon's heights and others not."