The museum also hosts both traveling and temporary exhibitions while also offering a variety of art education classes.

In 1970, the Junior Service League's art collection was placed at the LMFA on permanent loan and it was granted a museum charter by the State of Texas.

[2] On January 17, 1998, the LMFA's current location on Tyler Street in downtown Longview opened with a workshop and lectures by photographers Ruth Bernhard and Michael Kenna,[1][3] after the building had been renovated the previous year.

The collection, which consists of over 700 etchings, paintings, photographs, woodcuts, and more pieces of art, is too large to display in its entirety and is thus rotated into and out of the gallery.

The primary focus of the permanent collection is contemporary art created by Texas artists as well as those from around the region in the states of Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.