Built on the site of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair, the Museum at Bethel Woods includes a 6,278 square foot exhibit gallery space, a 132-seat theater, an events gallery, a museum shop, a 1,000-seat outdoor terrace stage and more.
The Poughkeepsie Journal has some of the best coverage of the new museum including photos and video. According to the paper:
The Museum at Bethel Woods opens Monday. On display are seven high-definition monitors, 15 interactive touch-screen computers, more than 300 objects and photographs and more than 2,000 pieces of music and film, as well as photographs, included in the films and interactive exhibits.
Alan Gerry, the cable television magnate who built Bethel Woods, sees the museum as he viewed a 15,000-seat concert pavilion he opened two years ago on the same property – as an economic engine to help a region of the state that was once flush with tourism.
“We think the addition of the museum to the performing arts center is going to be the catalyst to keep this place open 12 months a year,” Gerry said during opening remarks Wednesday. “It’s going to attract more tourism and that was the whole idea in the beginning, trying to do something to resurrect our community – to put it back on the map.”
The museum’s exhibits take visitors on a journey through the music of the 1960s, explain who played the Woodstock concert, who didn’t play and why. There is an actual school bus painted in psychedelic colors and art, with a film about cross-country journeys to the Woodstock concert projected onto the windshield. And there is a Volkswagen Bug.
On the web you can check out the Woodstock Project, an attempt at a complete Woodstock Discography. You can also take a look at someone’s photos of the original Woodstock here.
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