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Museum At Bethel Woods

Museum At Bethel Woods

The Museum at Bethel Woods is an immersive and captivating multi-media experience that combines film and interactive displays, text panels and artifacts to tell the story of the Sixties and Woodstock. It explores the unique experience of the Woodstock festival, its significance as a culminating event of a decade of radical cultural transformation, and the legacy of the Sixties and Woodstock today.

Through personal stories and profiles, immersive multi-media exhibit displays and experiences, engaging programs, and educational events, The Museum encourages inter-generational dialogue about important ideas and issues relevant to today. It also helps to preserve the historic site on which the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair took place.

The Museum at Bethel Woods is an integral part of the larger Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, which houses multiple concert and performance venues, as well as the historic festival "bowl" of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair. The Museum serves as an educational resource for the exploration of the unique American experience of the decade of the 1960s. The Main Gallery exhibit highlights the social, political, cultural and musical transformations of that period as well as its legacy today.

The 1960s was a transition period characterized by the Cold War, the race to space, an unpopular war, the Civil Rights Movement, and the youthful idealism of young people challenging the establishment. The Museum embodies the key ideals of the era we interpret—peace, respect, cooperation and a connection to the planet we live on and all the people who inhabit it. In addition to preserving and interpreting an era, the museum is actively involved in our community—through education, economic development, and historical preservation—to encourage social responsibility among our visitors and supporters, and to advocate for issues that make Sullivan County, and the world at large, a better place. To borrow from 1960s ideology, everyone has the power to change the world.

We hope you enjoy our work.

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