Q. The 18th edition says to include “The” when part of an official periodical title. What about upper- or lowercasing “The” in organizations such as The Juilliard School or The Metropolitan Museum of Art? (I prefer lowercase, but they refer to themselves with “The.”)
A. Chicago’s new guidelines relative to an initial article in names like The New York Times do not extend to the names of organizations. The main reason behind this difference is that the names of organizations aren’t set off from the surrounding text by italics or quotation marks.
The occasional exception can be made on a case-by-case basis—like the exceptions made by Julliard and the Met when writing about themselves (or by the University of Chicago Press in its copyright lines, including at the foot of this page: “© 2024 by The University of Chicago”). But when you refer to organizations other than your own, there’s generally no obligation to capitalize an initial “the.”