n 1985, the museum was given a valuable collection of Mexican folk art known as the Robert K. Winn Collection. It numbers over 3500 objects and contains valuable folk materials from all over Mexico. Robert Winn's collecting activities in Mexico spanned some 40 years.

Winn traveled with his parents to Mexico for the first time in 1930 when he was 10 years old. He began collecting folk art during that very visit, an activity he embraced with zeal for the rest of his life. Having grown up in San Antonio with its rich historical and cultural connections to Mexico, Winn was early impressed by Mexican music, dance, and art. He was himself an artist with a sophisticated sense of design, and he curated special exhibits of Latin American art for Texas museums during the 1960s and 1970s.

The greatest strength of the Winn Collection lies in its textiles, which include sarapes, Charro outfits, huipiles, sashes, and rebozos. Extremely fine textiles from Huichol, Maya, Mixtec, Nahua, Zapotec, and other indigenous groups in Mexico are represented. Winn looked at these pieces from an artist's perspective, closely examining them for texture, form, and color.

Winn's enthusiastic commitment to Mexican folk art touched everyone around him, and after his death led to the establishment of an informal group of folk art enthusiasts who shepherded the collection until it was given a permanent home at the San Antonio Museum of Art.