Mark Alan Leithauser was born in Detroit, Michigan on June 22, 1950. He received a bachelor’s degree in art and archaeology as well as an MFA in printmaking and drawing from Wayne State University in Michigan, where he also taught studio art for two years. Leithauser devoted the early years of his career to the graphic arts, impressed with the engravings and etchings of Durer and Rembrandt.

In the mid-1970s, while completing a second master's degree in printmaking at Wayne State, Leithauser took a job as an exhibition designer in Washington, D.C. At the time he only had access to a printing press in Detroit, so he worked on copper plates in D.C., then on weekends drove to Michigan and quickly printed a few proofs before driving back for work Monday morning. His artwork consisted of drawings and etchings until he shifted to oil painting later in his career.

Leithauser has exhibited at Coe Kerr Gallery in New York, the Hom Gallery in Washington D.C., the Brooklyn Museum, the Detroit Institute of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Museum of American Art, and the Library of Congress among others. He has served as an artist - in - residence at the Speed Museum in Louisville, KY, and as a panelist for the Coalition of Washington Artists. He won the Presidential Design Award in 1984 and 1988.

Leithauser has been the Senior Curator and Chief of Design for the National Gallery of Art , Washington, DC. His work is included in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Library of Congress, and many others.