The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C. is the parent company to the luxury hotel chain, The Ritz-Carlton Hotels. Ritz-Carlton operates 87 luxury hotels and resorts in major cities and resorts in 29 countries and territories.

The current company was founded in 1983, when the previous owners sold the brand name to create The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C., based in Boston, Massachusetts, which expanded the brand to other locations. The hotel company is today a subsidiary of Marriott International.

Predecessor Company

Ritz, Carlton and Ritz-Carlton in Europe

The story of The Ritz-Carlton begins with Swiss hotelier César Ritz who was well known in the hotel industry as the "king of hoteliers and hotelier to kings". Ritz redefined luxury accommodation in Europe with his management of The Ritz in Paris and the Carlton Hotel in London, among others. He and the renowned chef from his hotels, Auguste Escoffier, opened a la carte restaurants known as Ritz-Carlton on board the Hamburg-Amerika Line ocean liners SS Amerika in 1905 and SS Imperator in 1913. The restaurants on those ships ceased operating in 1914 with the outbreak of World War I. Although Ritz died in 1918, his wife Marie continued the tradition of opening hotels in his name.

Outsider art

The term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut (French: [aʁ bʁyt], "raw art" or "rough art"), a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by those on the outside of the established art scene, such as psychiatric hospital patients and children.

While Dubuffet's term is quite specific, the English term "outsider art" is often applied more broadly, to include certain self-taught or naïve art makers who were never institutionalized. Typically, those labeled as outsider artists have little or no contact with the mainstream art world or art institutions. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrates extreme mental states, unconventional ideas, or elaborate fantasy worlds.

Outsider art has emerged as a successful art marketing category; an annual Outsider Art Fair has taken place in New York since 1993, and there are at least two regularly published journals dedicated to the subject. The term is sometimes misapplied as a catch-all marketing label for art created by people who are outside the mainstream "art world" or "art gallery system", regardless of their circumstances or the content of their work.