A museum dedicated to the generation-defining hippie music festival Woodstock will welcome visitors despite losing $1 million in government funding and becoming an issue among politicians.

New York Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer, both Democrats, sought to channel $1 million in government funding for the opening of a museum that would honor the Woodstock festival of 1969.

The funding was not received, but the Museum at Bethel Woods, as it is called, will nevertheless open next year. It was in upstate New York town Bethel that hundreds of thousands of people gathered to celebrate the hippie movement, over three days of music, peace, love and psychotropic substances.

The issue has generated disagreement among politicians, with some being particularly outspoken against such a project.

Sen. Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican, attended Woodstock, according to the Associated Press and has contributed a video for the museum, but he does not support the proposed state funding.

“I was at Woodstock. I have been to the site of the Woodstock museum,” Coleman is quoted by the AP as saying. “It's a wonderful museum. That doesn't mean the government has to pay for it.”

Others are even more virulent, with Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, airing a TV ad that mocks Clinton’s initiative.

“A few days ago, Senator Clinton tried to spend $1 million on the Woodstock concert museum,” he says in the ad. “Now my friends, I wasn't there. I'm sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event,” he continues ironically, as footage shows him strapped to a bed as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

The AP reports McCain, a Navy Pilot, was captured in 1967 and spent nearly 6 years in a North Vietnamese prison. “I was tied up at the time,” he says in the ad.

Despite opposition, the Museum at Bethel Woods is set to open next year and welcome nostalgics. A commemorative plaque currently marks the former location of the stage, where legendary artists performed nearly 30 years ago: Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Who and many more.

Bethel Woods has reportedly already received $15 million in state funding for its Bethel Woods Center for the Arts.