BETHEL WOODS – Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, the iconic non-profit performance venue, museum, and site of the historic 1969 Woodstock festival, is excited to announce that The Museum at Bethel Woods was awarded an Inspire! Grant for Small Museums from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. 

The grant comes as a result of the Museum’s effort to document the personal stories of the Catskills, the Woodstock festival, and community activism during the 1960s and 1970s. 

Through the project, Community Connectors in the Catskills: Oral Histories of the 1960s, The Museum at Bethel Woods will partner with the Borscht Belt Museum and the Borscht Belt Marker Project to collect, process, and interpret oral histories from a quickly disappearing historical resource: communities who attended and participated in the summer camps, bungalow colonies, and resorts in the Catskill Mountains and Delaware River Valley during the 1960-70s.

 It is well-known and documented that many people who attended summer camps and participated in the bungalow and resort culture were, or went on to become, cultural leaders and changemakers. These stories are quickly disappearing.

“Together with the Borscht Belt Museum and the Borscht Belt Marker Project, we view the first-person accounts of the 1960s as essential to understanding the importance of social change, social progress, and freedom - all tenets of the tumultuous 1960s, a formative period in our country’s history,” said Dr. Neal V. Hitch, Senior Curator at The Museum at Bethel Woods. “Our goal is to document these stories before they are lost forever.”

The Museum at Bethel Woods interprets and preserves the National Register historic site of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair. The site represents one of the defining moments in American culture and tells the story of the social movements, political history, popular culture, and lasting influences of the 1960s. 

Collecting first-person stories is key to this mission. In 2020, The Museum at Bethel Woods embarked on a five-year Oral History Initiative, as COVID-19 made the importance of recording first-person perspectives of the 1960s more urgent with each passing day. Today, over 1,000 oral histories have been documented. By 2026, they will have one of the largest and most accessible collections of oral histories about life and culture in upstate New York.

“Our Oral History Initiative is a huge focus for our museum. Thanks to the Inspire! Grant, we will be able to collect the local stories of Woodstock. We view this as the perfect way to enter the fifth year of the OHI,” added Hitch. 

“Almost everywhere you go in Sullivan County someone will say, ‘I remember when I was a child, my mom made peanut butter sandwiches and we stood on the sidewalk and passed food out.’ People tell you that all over. But none of that was recorded for history until our collection. 

I think these oral histories will tell a side of the story about why Woodstock worked; why it was three days of peace. Because the community stepped up and cared for people,” Hitch said.

You can learn more about the Oral History Initiative, and/or sign up to tell your story at: https://www.bethelwoodscenter.org/museum/oral-history-initiative.