Congratulations Jen Bekman!

One of the Innovators of the Year! That is so cool. We discovered her blog, one of the smartest on the subject of art photography around, a few months ago and added her to a prominent section of our NetVibes page. Deserving of this she is.

Were it not for the Internet, there would probably be no Jen Bekman Gallery. After years of managing Web development teams at Netscape and Disney, Bekman found herself in her early 30s with some extra disposable cash and an interest in photography. She also had a lot of photographer friends who were having trouble getting their work seen and, more important, sold.

Despite her belief that "more people should buy and own art and more people should sell it," Bekman had never bought art herself because galleries made her uncomfortable. "I was always conscious of the weight of everything I didn't know that I was supposed to know," she explains. She decided to dip into her dot-com funds to open a populist-style brick-and-mortar gallery that is quintessentially defined and driven by Web culture.