11 Years, 17,000 donations and $255 million later, the Curtis Institute secures its future

“What will it take to keep Curtis tuition-free?”

Curtis president and CEO Roberto Díaz asked the question in 2016, when the Curtis Institute of Music was still in the early days of a major fundraising campaign.

Now the small music conservatory has answered, raising nearly $200 million for endowment, musical instruments, programs, and another building on Rittenhouse Square.

The math on the campaign can be viewed in various ways. But, by figuring in regular annual giving over the course of the campaign’s 11 years, the value of donated musical instruments, and the rising market value of existing endowment, Curtis has lifted its fortunes by about $255 million since fundraising began June 1, 2014.

“We’ve been incredibly blessed,” said Díaz of the show of support for the school.

Curtis’s tuition-free status has long distinguished it from other conservatories — even if it now has competition in this regard — and it has been able to sustain the policy mostly by reaping investment income from its large endowment and by soliciting annual donations.

Curtis founder Mary Louise Curtis Bok abolished tuition four years after the school’s opening in 1924. The newly replenished endowment in this campaign allows the practice to continue.

“It nearly doubles the Curtis endowment, which I think is remarkable for a school of this size,” says Matthew Sware, who came aboard as senior vice president for advancement nine months ago.

Curtis benefits from two separate endowments: those of the school and the Mary Louise Curtis Bok Foundation, which had a combined market value of $325 million as of March 31, 2025.

Curtis’s student body of composers, conductors, singers, and instrumentalists is small, hovering around just 165. But even a much larger school would envy many of the gifts that came in during the campaign, which ended May 31. Among them was a $55 million donation given by Nina Baroness von Maltzahn, an international philanthropist. Five gifts exceeded $10 million each. A total of 4,654 donors gave more than 17,000 donations.

The components Curtis is counting as part of its $255 million total are:

That acquisition was, if not an impulse buy, at least a mad dash. The Art Alliance is a half-block south of Curtis’s main buildings, and school leaders quickly assembled a group of donors after it became available earlier this year through the bankruptcy auction of assets from the University of the Arts. It was paid for with a $1.5 million gift from former board chair Mark E. Rubenstein and his wife, Robin; $1.5 million from Marguerite Lenfest; $1.5 million from a collection of other donors; and the rest taken from endowment to meet the purchase price of $7.6 million.

The school is still fundraising for the Art Alliance acquisition and renovation, with the building’s eventual purpose uncertain.

But no sooner does one fundraising campaign end than another begins. Díaz says the school will be speaking with students, alumni, faculty, board, and others about what the next plan and fundraising campaign might encompass.

One potential goal would be to create enough support to provide all students with free room and board. Many already receive a certain degree of assistance.

”It’s something that I think about because it’s in support of Mary Louise Curtis Bok’s intention,” Díaz says, which is that financial considerations should not keep a student from coming to Curtis. “I see it as fulfilling her original idea about what the school should be.“