The Woodstock Music And Art Fair

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair, the most famous of the 1960s rock festivals, held on a farm property in Bethel, New York, August 15–18, 1969.

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair was organized by four inexperienced promoters who nonetheless signed a who’s who of current rock acts, including Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, the Who, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, the Jefferson Airplane, Ravi Shankar, and Country Joe and the Fish.

The legend of Woodstock’s “Three Days of Peace and Music”, as its advertising promised, became enshrined in American history, at least partly because few of the festivals that followed were as star-studded or enjoyable.

A 1994 festival on the same site was better organized and more successful financially, if less legendary. In 1999 a third festival was marred by a small riot. The Museum at Bethel Woods, a multimedia exhibit space attached to a performing arts centre, opened in 2008, with the stated mission of preserving the original festival site and educating visitors about the music and culture of the Woodstock era.