Unhappy campers — a contest

At the Met:

They are so cute, these 16-inch-tall fellows in their floppy robes. Shuffling two by two, 36 strong, behind a choirboy on a black runway in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s cavernous Medieval Hall, they’re like a troop of fairy-tale dwarfs turned to stone by an evil sorcerer. Unhappy campers, they weep, sigh, gesture sadly and pray, mourning the demise of their liege, John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy (1371-1419)....

“The Mourners: Medieval Tomb Sculptures From the Court of Burgundy” was organized by the Dallas Museum of Art and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon under the aegis of Frame (French Regional and American Museum Exchange). (Besides the 37 mourners centrally presented, three more that were separated from the group long ago and are now owned by different museums are also on view in a separate vitrine. One last stray has yet to be found.)

—NYT, May 13, 2010

The basis...for Richard Stark's The Mourner!

The Mourner is a story of convergence—of cultures and of guys with guns. Hot on the trail of a statue stolen from a fifteenth-century French tomb, Parker enters a world of eccentric art collectors, greedy foreign officials, and shady KGB agents....

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Speaking of Parker/Stark, 57th Street Books in Chicago is holding a flash-fiction contest—judged by that Invisible Librarian Levi Stahl. Write the best story (350 words or less) about a Parker book heist...and get the first 12 Parker books in the University of Chicago reprint series!