Museum At Bethel Woods Selected As Partner For Building Capacity, Creating Sustainability, Growing Accessibility

The Museum at Bethel Woods, located at the site of the 1969 Woodstock festival, has been selected to participate in The Museum Association of New York's (MANY) "Building Capacity, Creating Sustainability, Growing Accessibility," an IMLS CARES Act grant project designed to help museums impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Museum at Bethel Woods is one of 98 museums from across New York State participating.

Throughout this two-year project, museums will identify a program to deliver virtually to their audiences, with an emphasis on revealing cultural and racial diversity within their communities. For Bethel Woods, this project will focus on sharing their oral history collection. Museum curators Julia Fell and Neal Hitch, two of the 200 staff who will be trained to use new hardware and software to develop these programs, are actively seeking diverse perspectives from those who attended Woodstock in 1969. The team is eager to discover new ways of sharing these stories with the world.

"We are so excited to have this opportunity to work with our colleagues across the state, the team at MANY, and with the support of IMLS to share such an important part of our collection with new audiences," said oral history lead and Assistant Curator at Bethel Woods, Julia Fell said. "We can't wait to bring informative, diverse, and perhaps most poignantly, positive and fun stories to the forefront during these challenging times," she continued.

"We are honored to be awarded IMLS CARES act funding and excited to be able to make an impact on the work of our colleagues and their museums across New York State," added Erika Sanger, MANY Executive Director. "We are living in an age of transition, experiencing a radical shift in our ways of learning and communicating. The group selected captures the diversity of our shared history in New York and our nation. The stories embodied in the museums' collections and the storytelling talents of their interpretive staff are the heart of the project," Sanger continued.

Other projects participants in the Mid-Hudson area include:
Boscobel House and Gardens
D & H Canal Historical Society
Ellenville Public Library & Museum
Gomez Mill House
Historical Society of Newburgh Bay
Hudson River Maritime Museum
Mid-Hudson Children's Museum
Mount Gulian Historic Site
Museum at Bethel Woods
Percy Grainger House
Putnam Art Council
Westchester Children's Museum

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