Epilogue: Exit through the Gift Shop

A common instinct on leaving a gallery or museum is to head for the gift shop; indeed,
such businesses are often located at the exit precisely to exploit this tendency. Here we
hope to find images, catalogues, or objects that capture some of the pleasures and colours
of the exhibition— to send to others or to retain on desks or in cupboards for later
reliving the experience. I am always a little abashed by my own penchant for commercializing
an encounter with a gallery so soon after experiencing it, although I treasure
the items from gallery gift shops that recall the visits.
What gifts feature as the viewer leaves this gallery of portraits of women in international
law? First, the gallery offers a panoply of stories about the lives of women
from all over the globe. The names of a few of the women represented here may be familiar
to international lawyers, but most are not. I found in these pages many extraordinary
characters who I had never encountered before. The authors do not sugar- coat
the portraits, acknowledging the contradictions and tensions in the positions their
subjects took, on occasion their authoritarian politics or racist views. The group portraits
are particularly moving, full of unsung visionaries and tireless workers otherwise
submerged in a collective.