[9] Chartered by the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, the institute became one of first endowed music schools in the US, with significant funding provided by philanthropist and banker James Loeb.

[15] Five years after its inception, the institute moved to 120 Claremont Avenue in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan onto a property purchased from Bloomingdale Insane Asylum near the Columbia University campus.

[j] Juilliard's new building at Lincoln Center would be designed by Pietro Belluschi with associates Eduardo Catalano and Helge Westermann.

[37] The Juilliard School building at Lincoln Center was completed on October 26, 1969, officially opening with a dedication ceremony and concert.

[43] Mennin made substantial changes to the L&M program—ending ear training and music history, adding performances and composition in class, and hiring the well-known pedagogue Renée Longy to teach solfège.

[34] The drama department first only trained actors, of which the first class graduated as Group 1 in 1972, but added playwrights and directors programs in the 1990s.

At the time, graduates comprised approximately 20 percent of the Big Five American Orchestras and half of the New York Philharmonic.

[58][59] In September 2005, Colin Davis conducted an orchestra that combined students from the Juilliard and London's Royal Academy of Music at the BBC Proms,[60] and during 2008 the Juilliard Orchestra embarked on a successful tour of China, performing concerts as part of the Cultural Olympiad in Beijing, Suzhou, and Shanghai under the expert leadership of Maestro Xian Zhang.

[65][66] On September 28, 2015, the Juilliard School announced a major expansion into Tianjin during a visit by China's first lady, Peng Liyuan, the institution's first such full-scale foray outside the United States.

[68][69] In May 2017, retired New York City Ballet principal dancer Damian Woetzel was named president, replacing Joseph W.

[70] From March 2020 through the spring 2021 semester, the school switched to online classes and suspended live performances in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

[73][74] In September, the school's Evening Division was renamed to Juilliard Extension which would broaden to offer programs in person and online.

[75] In December of the same year, a $50 million gift was given to the school's Music Advancement Program to help students of underrepresented backgrounds.

[77][78] The building also houses the Alice Tully Hall, where the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center performs.

The board of trustees includes approximately thirty members, with a chair and two vice-chairs, and is responsible for appointing Juilliard's president and managing the school's business affairs.

Other academic subdivisions include the Ellen and James S. Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts and Lila Acheson Wallace Library.

All Bachelor's and Master's degree programs require credits from Liberal Arts courses, which include seminar classes on writing, literature, history, culture, gender, philosophy, environment, and modern languages.

[105] Until 2006, when James Houghton became director of the Drama Division, there was a "cut system" that would remove up to one-third of the second-year class.

The Andrew W. Mellon Artist Diploma Program for Theatre Directors was a two-year graduate fellowship that began in 1995 (expanded to three years in 1997); this was discontinued in the fall of 2006.

Together with the Willson Theater, the Center for Innovation in the Arts is the home of interdisciplinary and electro-acoustic projects and performances at the Juilliard School.

It is one of the world's largest collections of Steinway and Son's pianos in the space of concert halls and practice rooms.

[111][112] Pipe organs at Juilliard include those by Holtkamp (III/57, III/44, II/7), Schoenstein (III/12), Flentrop (II/17), Noack (II/3) and Kuhn (IV/85), which are located in various practice rooms and recital halls.

[117][12] The school acquired the Juilliard Manuscript Collection in 2006, which includes autograph scores, sketches, composer-emended proofs and first editions of major works by Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Chopin, Schubert, Liszt, Ravel, Stravinsky, Copland, and other composers of the classical music canon.

Juilliard and the Curtis Institute of Music were the only two American conservatories that made the top 10 in the 2022 QS World Rankings in performing arts.

[129][56] The school launched an Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (EDIB) initiative in 2018, which includes a task force and provides workshops for all faculty and staff.

[132] However, some have criticized the school's lack of diversity in its faculty and curriculum and focus on primarily Western Classical Music.

[141] The Juilliard School has a variety of ensembles, including chamber music, jazz, orchestras, and vocal/choral groups.

[144] Established in 2003, the Juilliard Electric Ensemble allows all students to use multi-media technology to produce and perform works.

[207][208][209] Since Peter Mennin's presidency, the school regularly offers master classes with various professional artists and its own faculty members.

Past guest artists for these classes have included Leonard Bernstein,[210] Herbert von Karajan,[211] Arthur Rubinstein,[212] Maria Callas,[213] Luciano Pavarotti,[214] Murray Perahia, András Schiff, Joyce DiDonato, Yannick Nézet-Séguin,[215] Renée Fleming,[216] Robert Levin,[217] and Steven Isserlis,[218] among others.