Isaac Scott Hathaway Museum

Isaac Scott Hathaway Museum

The Isaac Scott Hathaway Museum is closed. The museum was "dedicated to establishing a public facility to highlight individual biographies and display artifacts, art and written work" of "distinguished African-American artists, writers and others contributing to the community."

The Isaac Hathaway Museum was last located at 644 Georgetown Street in the Robert H. Williams Cultural Center in Lexington, KY.

Isaac Hathaway was an educator and artist most known for creating more than 100 busts and masks of prominent African Americans. Hathaway taught at what is now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB) for more than twenty years as the first chair of the department of ceramics in the college’s art department.

In 1945, he was selected to design two commemorative coins honoring African Americans, becoming the first African American to design a coin for the U.S. Mint. The first coin commemorated Booker T. Washington and was minted from 1946 to 1951. The second coin commemorated George Washington Carver and was minted from 1951 to 1954.

The Isaac Scott Hathaway Collection at the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, in Little Rock (Pulaski County), Arkansas, is the largest known collection of Hathaway art in the world. The Mosaic Templars Cultural Center also holds Hathaway’s papers, including correspondence, sketches, and other textual documents.

The museum was established in December 2002, and an office was opened on North Broadway, then moved to the Heritage Art Gallery in April 2005. The museum opened in the Lexington History Center in April 2007 and moved to the Georgetown Street location in July 2011.

The Robert H. Williams Cultural Center is housed in the building that served as the Lexington Colored Orphan Industrial Home.