WOODSTOCK (New York) The 450,000 hippies, peaceniks and music lovers who flocked to the Woodstock festival four decades ago envisioned many strange and wonderful things.

They imagined world peace, an end to the Vietnam War, free love and legal drugs. But one thing even the most hardcore stoners probably never thought was that the muddy field they were partying on would one day become a museum devoted to their antics.

The Bethel Woods Centre for the Arts now stands on the beautiful green hillside, surrounded by rolling fields and woods. A gleaming new museum, barely a year old, has been built on the same fields that hosted what became the most famous music concert ever held. Inside the museum artefacts from the festival are preserved. Hippy T-shirts, music posters and even a piece of the original fence that surrounded the concert are displayed with the reverence of Roman marbles at the British Museum.

Outside the picture is similarly incongruous. The museum exists alongside a state-of-the art concert venue, but the churned-up earth that marked Woodstock has been replaced by neatly clipped grass car parks. The atmosphere of free love and open drug use has turned into stern notices warning against bringing any alcohol and insisting on smoking (cigarettes) only in designated areas. Cameras too are banned, while lawn chairs are available for hire at $5 a time. No tents are allowed. This may be the site of Woodstock. But concerts held here are no Woodstocks.The museum's director, Wade Lawrence, admits times have changed. He would have loved, he says, to recreate something like the original concert to mark the festival's 40th anniversary. “All of us here wanted to invite the whole world. But from a logistical point of view it was easy to make the call. There is no way this region could support such a large event.”

Of course, that was true 40 years ago too. It just did not stop anyone. The music festival that defined a generation was conceived as a fundraiser for a record label that would be based in the artsy upstate New York town of Woodstock, about two hours from Manhattan. As news spread by word of mouth it became clear that a large outdoor venue was needed. At first it was planned to be held in a small village near Woodstock called Wallkill, but local people got wind of the coming hippy gathering.

A desperate search began for an alternative venue, finally settling on a farm owned by dairyman Max Yasgur more than 60 miles from Woodstock itself. Organisers told city officials they expected no more than 50,000 visitors. In the end almost half a million showed up. Traffic jams stretched 15km, houses became islands in a sea of humanity, lakes and farm ponds became bathrooms.

'Society changes'

But also history was made. There was relatively little trouble. People pulled together to feed, clothe and house each other. And the best musicians of the age gathered together for chaotic concert-going. After three days of creative mayhem, it ended on Monday morning with Hendrix's famous electric guitar rendition of The Star Spangled Banner. “I don't think it would be possible to recreate that vibe now. It was as much a social gathering and a statement as a music festival. I don't think young people feel the same way. Society changes,” says Lawrence.

Woodstock itself seems to bear that out. On the streets of the tidy, picturesque town the ideals of social revolution that are forever associated with its name have been overturned in favour of more commercial American values. Little remains of any hippy past. A wooden post on the village green proclaims “May Peace Prevail on the Earth” but the green has been paved over - residents had complained it got too muddy and attracted undesirables. Aileen McNally, who runs the Woodstock Hippie Shop, complains that most visitors just photograph themselves in front of her shop sign without coming in.

But not everything from the 1960s has disappeared in Woodstock. Down a hard-to-find muddy lane in the hills outside town lies another museum that has kept the 1960s spirit firmly alive, rather than putting it inside a display case or selling it as a slogan on T-shirts. It is a very different museum to Bethel. Co-founder Nathan Koenig, dressed in shorts and a flowery shirt, hails a lone visitor with a grin and a handshake as the Beatles' Get Back plays on his office sound system. “I survived the psychedelic revolution!” he says with a grin before launching into a rambling monologue that hints the survival may not have been 100 per cent complete.

Koenig is the real deal. He and fellow hippy Shelli Lipton have devoted themselves to building the Woodstock Museum in this wooded valley. A decrepit hippy bus stands amid weeds in the museum's yard. A ramshackle building contains piles upon piles of video and audio recordings from the era. A cinema shows films devoted to 1960s icons. A shop sells meditation guides, books on Native American religion and posters calling for the legalisation of marijuana.

The museum runs on donations, goodwill and solar power. Lipton, who attended Woodstock but confesses to having little memory of it, says Woodstock was less a music festival and more a political movement. “It was not about the music. It was really about a peace protest. We were making a statement about peace. That we had three days of music was just a bonus.”

Koenig agrees. He missed Woodstock because he was in France, but he has dedicated his life to living the hippy lifestyle and its politics and looks back happily on the 1960s. “We wanted to change the world. We still do,” he says.

For some at the time, Woodstock became the ultimate example of 1960s counter-culture run amok. The drug use, promiscuity and trashing of a small conservative community were held up as a sign of a sickness in the nation. But for others the festival came to symbolise a togetherness of an entire generation. It stood against an unjust war and wanted to throw out traditional values that society had outgrown. The debate has never been resolved.

Judged by its own aims Woodstock did not succeed. The “war against drugs” rages on. America is involved in not one but two different foreign wars. The peace ideals of 1960s music have not resonated with a new generation.

A group of visitors arrive. They include Mark and Grace Cort, a couple who attended Woodstock as teenagers. Grace insists that she was only there for the music. But Mark says that for a brief moment, there was a revolution in the air. “It was just a small window in time.”

Koenig and Lipton are determined to keep that window open. They have won a grant to fund a new museum in their back yard, and recently held an architectural contest to design it. They see themselves as guardians of a flame of social protest that has not quite died out.

Given the continuing foreign wars, the millions of Americans without health insurance and the economic crisis, Koenig thinks being a hippy should be more relevant than ever. “We are a living museum. But, just wait, people will start to look for our ideals again. I'm just surprised it's been 40 years for people to wake up.”—Dawn/Guardian News & Media