Museum to tell story of Woodstock

ALBANY, N.Y., June 1 (UPI) -- When the Museum at Bethel Woods opens this week in Bethel, N.Y., it will tell the story of the famous Woodstock music festival, a museum official says.

Museum senior director Michael Egan said the venue will allow those intrigued by the Woodstock Music and Art Fair to fully encapsulate what it would have been like to be at the 1969 outdoor festival, the New York Daily News reported Sunday.

Egan, who was not at the historic music festival, said the mere idea of Woodstock evokes thoughts of freedom in some individuals.

"It connects them to the whole spirit of the '60s, the idea that you could live your life by ideals, not just pragmatism," he told the Daily News.

Egan said he hopes the site, which officially opens Monday, will inspire others to feel the same way.

"One of the things we hope people will see here," he told the newspaper, "is that Woodstock didn't come out of nowhere. It grew out of everything, musical and otherwise, that happened in the '60s."