SMART MONEY: The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded Chicago’s Smart Museum a $300,000 grant to fund the implementation of “Echoes of the Past: The Buddhist Cave Temples of Xiangtangshan.” According to artdaily.org, the focus of the exhibition is an important early Buddhist pilgrimage site in China. So why should you care? I’ll tell you why: the exhibition is coming to SMU’s Meadows Museum in August 2011.

VISUAL ARTS BITS: Willard Spiegelman looks at the reverence with which some of the artists currently showing at The MAC treat their influences. (Front Row) … Glasstire makes that drive up I45 from Houston to review “Andy Warhol: The Last Decade” at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. (glasstire.com) … If you’re an artist who has noticed your work posted on the Web without your permission, there are things you can do to fix that. (dallasartsrevue.com)

QUOTABLE: “If you run the film without the orchestral soundtrack, there’s nourishing life taken away. The orchestra itself is capable of producing a sense of wonder and awe and excitement and adventure.”

– Composer John Williams, speaking with dallasnews.com about the importance of musical scores. Williams conducts the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra tonight in a concert that features some of his most famous works.