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Woodstock History and Hearsay

Art Book Edition Celebrates Prequel to
World-Famous 1969 Music Festival

Woodstock, NY—September 1 , 2006—This summer the town of Woodstock launched a centennial celebration of the renowned Maverick colony. Founded by a Whitmanesque Midwesterner named Hervey White, the freewheeling Maverick commune and its tradition of August music festivals led to the internationally famous Woodstock Festival of 1969. The summer of 2006 also marked the 90th anniversary of the Maverick concert series-the longest continuously operating chamber music program in the United States. On August 1, 2006, to commemorate these important milestones, WoodstockArts released an art book edition of Anita M. Smith's Woodstock History and Hearsay.

This book, the town's first official history when published in 1959, documents the run-up of events that culminated in the iconic Woodstock Festival a decade later, and serves as a reminder of the values and artistic impulses that underpinned a more idealistic era. The art book second edition is being designed by Abigail Sturges (formerly with Harry N. Abrams, Inc.), and includes a great deal of new material, including extensive endnotes, a bibliography and an expanded index. With the addition of close to 200 art reproductions, maps and images of local personalities, it showcases the work of the many creative people who have called Woodstock their home. Author Anita M. Smith was a painter, herbalist and writer who journeyed to Woodstock in 1912 to study art under John F. Carlson. Soon she was exhibiting her work at the National Academy of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In the 1930s she turned to a career in herbalism and during that era began developing extensive files on local lore. In the late 1950s she completed the first edition of the book.

Woodstock History and Hearsay tells the story of the town from the time of the Amerindians, up through Revolutionary days, the glass-making era, the down-rent war, and the establishment of a utopian arts enclave during the early 20th century. With an artist's eye, a worldly sophistication and a you-are-there charm, Smith weaves in tales of witches, farmers, mountain folk, Second World War veterans, and an astonishing array of fellow artists, neighbors and visitors that include Eleanor Roosevelt, John Burroughs, George Bellows, Helen Hayes, James T. Shotwell, John F. Carlson, Thomas Mann, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Edward G. Robinson, John Dewey, Pete Seeger, Carl Walters, Philip Guston and many others.

Joanne Woodward, stage, film and television actor, says of the new book: "This stunning second edition of Anita Smith's Woodstock History and Hearsay sensitively captures the beauty and charm of America's oldest working colony of the arts."

The new edition's ISBN is 9780967926841 and its trim size is 8½ by 11 inches. In hardback with 335 pages, it retails at $37.50.