Diana Korzenik was born on March 15, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York. Her father, Harold Korzenik, was a lawyer; her mother, Lillian (née Shapiro) Korzenik, was an art expert. Korzenik originally attended Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, but ultimately transferred to Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH. In 1961, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History. She received her Masters… After studying art history at Columbia University, she taught in New York City for five years. I will ask her where she received her Masters degree and edit this later

While in graduate school, she studied with Rudolf Arnheim, one of the 21st century's most influential thinkers in the visual arts. Arnheim was a German-born author, art and film theorist, perceptual psychologist, and educator. Korzenik received her EdD from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA in 1972. She also studied at Yale Norfolk Art School and New York Studio School.

After completing her doctorate at Harvard, she began teaching at the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA. She taught courses on art education and served as the chair of the Art Education Department from 1972 to 1987. She has also worked as a course instructor and visiting lecturer at Harvard, a guest speaker, a consultant, and a curator of exhibits.

She also began collecting historical American art educational materials while living in Boston and visiting flea markets. Her collection of art education books and ephemera was donated to the Huntington Library in 1998, including over 600 items. Over the course of her career, Korzenik was a member of a number of professional organizations and institutions: the National Art Education Association; the Caucus for Social Theory and Art Education, an affiliate of the National Art Education Association; the Ephemera Society of America; the Boston Athenaeum; the Massachusetts Historical Society; and the American Antiquarian Society. Korzenik has presented her research twice at NAEA conferences.

Korzenik has published extensively in art education journals and with prestigious publishing houses. Her publications include: Feelings, Conflict, People, Change, Groups, Prejudice, editor and contributor, Lincoln Filene Center, Tufts University (1972); “Saying it with pictures,” The Arts and Cognition, Johns Hopkins University Press (1977); Drawn to Art: A Nineteenth-Century American Dream, University Press of New England (1985); “A Developmental History of Art Education,” Framing the Past: Essays on Art Education, National Art Education Association (1990); “Women Doing Historical Research,” Studies in Art Education (1990); Art-making and Education, with Maurice Brown, University of Illinois Press (1993); The Development of Artistically Gifted Children, contributor, 1995; The Cultivation of American Artists, editor, with Caroline Sloat and Georgia Barnhill, Oak Knoll Press (1998); “Objects of American Art Education: Highlights from the Diana Korzenik Collection,” Huntington Library Press (2004).

Korzenik has received multiple awards throughout her life: fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and the Ford Foundation, 1962; award from New York State Professional Women, 1968; grant from J.P. Getty Trust, 1985; the Laurence L. Winship Book Award for Drawn to Art, Boston Globe, 1986; the June McFee Award, National Art Education Association, 1998; and the Leab Award for Objects of American Art Education, American Library Association, 2005.