Ruth D. Lechuga was an Austrian-born, naturalized Mexican citizen who became a physician and a collector of Mexican folk art. Her interest led her to produce anthropological studies on the cultures of the different states of Mexico. She gave up her medical lab work to work in anthropology, curating several museum collections. Lechuga published research on indigenous Mexican culture and craftwork. Her ethnographic photographs earned her notice as one of the major professionals in the field. Her private collection of 20,000 ethnographic photographs and over 10,000 artifacts were donated upon her death to the magazine Artes de México and the Franz Mayer Museum. Several posthumous showings of the collection have taken place and in 2016, a research center bearing her name was opened in the former basement of the Franz Mayer Museum.