'Woodstock: 3 Days That Lasted 50 Years' opening reception at Morrison Hotel Gallery
photo by Stephanie Augello

Woodstock turning 50: photo exhibit opened, original festival being broadcast, more

The 50th anniversary of Woodstock approaches this weekend, and as mentioned, there are countless events celebrating it (not the Woodstock 50 festival, though). On Friday (8/9), the Morrison Hotel Gallery hosted the opening reception for its commemorative photo exhibit, Woodstock: 3 Days that Lasted 50 Years. Featuring work from photographers Henry Diltz, Elliott Landy, Lisa Law, Ken Regan, Amalie R. Rothschild, Rowland Scherman, and Baron Wolman on display and for sale, the exhibit runs through Labor Day, and its reception was attended by Diltz and Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang (who signed copies of their recent book Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music) as well as music photographers Bob Gruen and David Godlis, and others. Check out pictures of the scene in the gallery above, and find more about the exhibit, and see photos for purchase here.

Speaking of Michael Lang, he spoke to Reuters at the reception about the cancelled anniversary festival, which he said he was “pretty bummed” about. “The reason to do it really was to engage people in activism and the efforts to stop global warming, which I think is probably the greatest threat to humanity that we’ve seen in our lifetime,” he said. “It was really about trying to see if, when [my generation] were in charge, things could work the way we hoped they would. And it did. Everybody really came together in a community of celebrating peace and music. We were kind of losing that dream for a better way to be on the planet. So for me, it was kind of a last-ditch effort to see that if we took the tribes out of the daily grind and the cities and came out to nature, with us in charge, we could actually make it work amongst ourselves.”

Meanwhile, if you’d like, you can spend Woodstock anniversary weekend listening to the festival in its entirety. Philadelphia’s WXPN will broadcast “Woodstock – As It Happened – 50 Years On” from Thursday 8/15 through Sunday 8/18. “From the movie that came out in March of 1970, to the numerous collections of recordings released over the years, there has yet to be a full authentic musical account of the concert until now,” Associate General Manager for Programming at WXPN Bruce Warren says. “WXPN is going to pay the most effective tribute to the music, the way it was originally performed, at exactly the same times the sets were performed to give our listeners a feel for how it all really went down.” See the broadcast schedule below.

If you’re hoping to make a pilgrimage to the original site of the festival to celebrate the weekend, though, you are likely out of luck. The Associated Press reports you’ll need a “travel pass,” available only to people with tickets to Bethel Woods Center for the Arts shows with Santana, Ringo Starr, and John Fogerty, to pass through checkpoints that will be set up in the area. “We’re trying to encourage people that are not interested in the concert-side of things, and just want to come and sort of breathe the air and feel the vibes … to come on other weekends,” Bethel Woods CEO Darlene Fedun told AP.

WXPN’s “Woodstock – As It Happened – 50 Years On” Broadcast Schedule

Thursday, August 15
5:07 p.m. — Richie Havens
7:10 p.m. — Swami Satchidanadna
7:30 p.m. — Sweetwater
8:30 p.m. — Bert Sommer
9:20 p.m. — Tim Hardin
10:20 p.m. — Ravi Shankar
11:20 p.m. — Melanie
11:55 p.m. — Arlo Guthrie

Friday, August 16
12:55 a.m. — Joan Baez
12:30 p.m. — Quill
1:20 p.m. — Country Joe McDonald
2 p.m. — Santana
3:30 p.m. — John B. Sebastian
4:45 p.m. — The Keef Hartley Band
6 p.m. — The Incredible String Band
7:30 p.m. — Canned Heat
9 p.m. — Mountain
10:30 p.m. — Grateful Dead

Saturday, August 17
12:30 a.m. — Creedence Clearwater Revival
2 a.m. — Janis Joplin
3:30 a.m. — Sly & The Family Stone
5 a.m. — The Who
8 a.m. — Jefferson Airplane
2 p.m. — Joe Cocker
6:30 p.m. — Country Joe & The Fish
8:15 p.m. — Ten Years After
10 p.m. — The Band

Sunday, August 18
12 a.m. — Johnny Winter
1:30 a.m. — Blood, Sweat & Tears
3 a.m. — Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
6 a.m. — The Butterfield Blues Band
7:30 a.m. — Sha Na Na
9 a.m. — Jimi Hendrix