Marlene Park was born in Los Angeles. She attended UCLA and went on to obtain a Ph.D. in art history at Columbia University. She taught at Barnard, Hunter, and Lehman Colleges, but spent most of her career at John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Although she began as a Medievalist, she turned to American Art and became a leading authority on the Federal Arts Projects of the 1930s. Her book, Democratic Vistas, co-authored with Gerald Markowitz, is the basic study of the New Deal's post office murals and sculptures. Writing for Sanity is an edited version of the journal she kept during her six-year struggle with breast cancer, a journal she wished to have published. She was married for 52 years to William Park and is survived by him, two children, two stepchildren, and nine grandchildren.