There are times when I really regret being born a Gen-Xer. Recounting all the incredible events that took place 40 years ago has convinced me that I’m really a hippie at heart who was born a few decades too late.
I may not have had any control over when I was born, but I’m grateful that I can to relive those experiences that I missed (as much as is possible without ingesting illegal substances). I recently decided to take my little hippie heart—clad in my modern-day Birkenstocks (i.e. Chacos) and driving a hybrid car—to the one-year-old museum established at the site of Woodstock.
Part of the fun is actually finding the place: winding around rural New York, through little towns, past expansive farms and grain silos, I came to truly appreciate the hundreds of thousands of people who found the site before the days of Mapquest.
The Museum at Bethel Woods is a museum dedicated to the 1960s in general and Woodstock specifically and is accompanied on the same site by the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts—a performance center where concerts are held regularly, keeping that musical heritage alive. Both are positioned directly on the site where the three-day music festival was held on Max Yasgur’s farm.
The museum’s permanent exhibit begins with a timeline of the 1960s (highlighting both political events from various years as well as songs that were released each year) which set the stage for Woodstock’s birth, 40 years ago this weekend. While I enjoyed progressing through the decade and learning the history of the concert, a few features in particular captured my interested.
Rounding one bend, I found myself face-to-face with a converted school bus with flower power and psychedelic décor all over the outside and bench seats (as expected) inside. Once seated, a short video about how the multitudes were transported to the concert was projected onto the inside of the window shield. I smiled at the 8-tracks stacked at the back of the bus and the copy of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring next to the driver’s seat; my imagination transported me to what it must have been like to be traveling on the bus en route with hundreds of thousands of others to this unparalleled event.
Following that was the video recreating the concert itself. Not only was it showing actual footage from the concert, but in order to transport the viewer to the concert as much as possible, the set-up around the screen was made to imitate a stage, complete with stage scaffolding, lights, and enormous speakers. When the video described the helicopters transporting the performers from the hotel to the stage (the only option since the roads were all clogged with concert-goers), the sound of a helicopter descending roared and lights, made to look like propellers, spun on the ground in front of us. Rain, which plagued the crowd throughout the weekend, was simulated with thunder booming and lights flashing as the sound of rain “poured down” on us. And for that moment, though comfortably dry, I was transported back to 1969.
If all one gauges a history museum on is how accurately it is able to help a viewer live or re-live an experience, The Bethel Woods Museum would receive high marks from me. I was placed directly in the middle of the 1960s and grew to understand the need for and significance of Woodstock. And, judging on others’ reactions in the recording booth in which people can share their experiences—those who attended Woodstock, those who wanted to attend but couldn’t, and those of us who would have attended had we been around—other viewers were successfully transplanted back 40 years as well.
And this hippie left experiencing her own little high.
Mary Gen Davies is the gardening, protesting, recycling, all-around green-lovin’ Program Associate at HPP.
I may not have had any control over when I was born, but I’m grateful that I can to relive those experiences that I missed (as much as is possible without ingesting illegal substances). I recently decided to take my little hippie heart—clad in my modern-day Birkenstocks (i.e. Chacos) and driving a hybrid car—to the one-year-old museum established at the site of Woodstock.
Part of the fun is actually finding the place: winding around rural New York, through little towns, past expansive farms and grain silos, I came to truly appreciate the hundreds of thousands of people who found the site before the days of Mapquest.
The Museum at Bethel Woods is a museum dedicated to the 1960s in general and Woodstock specifically and is accompanied on the same site by the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts—a performance center where concerts are held regularly, keeping that musical heritage alive. Both are positioned directly on the site where the three-day music festival was held on Max Yasgur’s farm.
The museum’s permanent exhibit begins with a timeline of the 1960s (highlighting both political events from various years as well as songs that were released each year) which set the stage for Woodstock’s birth, 40 years ago this weekend. While I enjoyed progressing through the decade and learning the history of the concert, a few features in particular captured my interested.
Rounding one bend, I found myself face-to-face with a converted school bus with flower power and psychedelic décor all over the outside and bench seats (as expected) inside. Once seated, a short video about how the multitudes were transported to the concert was projected onto the inside of the window shield. I smiled at the 8-tracks stacked at the back of the bus and the copy of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring next to the driver’s seat; my imagination transported me to what it must have been like to be traveling on the bus en route with hundreds of thousands of others to this unparalleled event.
Following that was the video recreating the concert itself. Not only was it showing actual footage from the concert, but in order to transport the viewer to the concert as much as possible, the set-up around the screen was made to imitate a stage, complete with stage scaffolding, lights, and enormous speakers. When the video described the helicopters transporting the performers from the hotel to the stage (the only option since the roads were all clogged with concert-goers), the sound of a helicopter descending roared and lights, made to look like propellers, spun on the ground in front of us. Rain, which plagued the crowd throughout the weekend, was simulated with thunder booming and lights flashing as the sound of rain “poured down” on us. And for that moment, though comfortably dry, I was transported back to 1969.
If all one gauges a history museum on is how accurately it is able to help a viewer live or re-live an experience, The Bethel Woods Museum would receive high marks from me. I was placed directly in the middle of the 1960s and grew to understand the need for and significance of Woodstock. And, judging on others’ reactions in the recording booth in which people can share their experiences—those who attended Woodstock, those who wanted to attend but couldn’t, and those of us who would have attended had we been around—other viewers were successfully transplanted back 40 years as well.
And this hippie left experiencing her own little high.
Mary Gen Davies is the gardening, protesting, recycling, all-around green-lovin’ Program Associate at HPP.
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