As plastic beads and toilet paper filled the streets of New Orleans this Fat Tuesday, palaces in Vienna, Austria, hosted their final Viennese waltz of the season. 

Ball season in Vienna, which traditionally lasts Nov. 11 to Shrove Tuesday each year, attracts thousands of visitors to Viennese palaces that host hundreds of balls every season. With string ensembles, fancy attire, and grand ballrooms, Viennese ball season is reflective of something that is lacking in American society: high culture.

Last semester, I attended a Viennese Christmas waltz in Washington, D.C., while participating in the Washington-Hillsdale Internship Program. There, other students and I briefly talked with Austrian ambassador to the United States Petra Schneebauer about the history of Viennese waltzes in Austria and the ball season. 

She showed us pictures of her daughter leading a procession of hundreds of dancers across the dance floor in a Viennese palace to commence the evening’s activities. It was clear she took great pride not only in her daughter, but in the tradition of Viennese waltzes, which spans centuries and is still alive.

A comparable event in America is hard to identify. There’s the Fourth of July, and while it’s arguably the best day of the summer, it’s not the same as nearly four months of elegant balls. Mardi Gras certainly isn’t the answer either, as many Americans are repulsed by the depravity surrounding the modern celebration of the day.

America has always had a kind of ruggedness about her and her people. While America has her fair share of beautiful buildings, Europe has the advantage of centuries of history that America does not have. And with history comes old artwork. 

In some societies, like republican Florence, guilds were responsible for funding the beautification of the city. If they wanted an elegant city, it was up to them to fund the artwork that would grace their town.

This gave the world some of the greatest works of art including Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise” doors on the baptistery of San Giovanni, Donatello’s “David” statue.

The glitz and glamour of Art Deco cocktail parties, à la Gatsby, while great in their own sense, are not the lasting marks of high culture seen in many European nations’ history.

But, great things have come out of America, many we celebrate often at Hillsdale: the Founding and the Constitution, which laid the foundation for the great nation America is to this day; skillful painters like Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Cole, who beautifully captured the American landscape in their works, such as Bierstadt’s “A Storm in the Rocky Mountains,” and Cole’s “The Oxbow”; and jazz music, which brought new life to the music scene. 

In the summer of 2024, sculptor Sabin Howard completed the National World War I memorial “A Soldier’s Journey,” located in Washington, D.C., and gave a talk at Hillsdale College in October 2024. Howard’s sculpture honors the greatness of American soldiers in World War I and tells the story of American involvement in the war through the lens of several human figures. For Howard, he aims to tell the story of heroic Americans through great works of art.

“Art and culture are just not important in this country and that needs to be changed,” Howard said in his speech on campus Oct. 3, 2024. “That is the critical moment we are facing right now because modern art has really fallen apart in a big way. So I have another job to do now.”

America will never have a “high culture” like many European nations have had for centuries because, as Howard noted, art does not mean much to most Americans. Yet the things that make America what she is are uniquely American qualities, and are something we should celebrate. And while some traditions, like Mardi Gras, are not as lofty as many European high culture traditions, we should be proud of what American traditions we do have.