2005 Year

FIRST, if you need to feel wanted, consider a career in museum management. Second, be wary of new ventures involving flooded orchestra pits. And third, be jealous of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where life at the moment seems almost impossibly good. For the movers and shakers of highbrow Southern California -- and indeed for arts leaders nationwide -- these are just some of the larger lessons of 2005, as well as clues, in some cases, to what 2006 may bring.

IS it me or have we been stuck in what Duke Ellington would call "a sentimental mood" over this last year? In the age of reality television, it seems that the focus on ordinary people pursuing inane challenges for mass entertainment has become a modern form of melodrama. We can see the impulse played out, for example, in both the corny mini-biopics of "American Idol" contestants and the overwrought sob stories that define whose home gets picked for "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."

THE year 2005 was the best of art times, and it was the worst of art times. * The UCLA Hammer Museum offered an invigorating survey of new art that crystallized an emerging sensibility among younger artists, braced against the feeling of dissolution so prevalent now. "Thing: New Sculpture From Los Angeles" was a rarity -- a fresh and meaningful overview.

GIVEN all the focus this year on the declining box office, it would follow that compiling a list of the year's best movies might feel like an exercise in futility. And if I were required to choose only from the movies that pass for major American cinema these days, it would have been exactly that. There's an odd inversion that seems to be taking place: The more big studio dramas reach for "seriousness" of the kind that tends to win awards, the more bogus they come off.

WHEN Philip Johnson died early this year, at the age of 98, a certain alluring but ultimately damaging definition of architecture may well have gone with him. Both in his own designs and in his role as his profession's leading tastemaker, Johnson helped popularize the notion that what architects contribute to the culture has more to do with image and a kind of urbane glamour than with the way people actually use buildings or how cities develop over time.

LATELY, nearly every conversation with someone in the television news business begins with a common refrain: "Can you believe what's going on this year?" In the last 12 months, the industry has been confronted with waves of change so relentless that they have remade the very appearance, tone and distribution of broadcast news. Think about it: At this time last year, Tom Brokaw had just retired from the anchor desk at NBC. Dan Rather had three months left at the helm of the "CBS Evening News."

BORIS EIFMAN Russian choreographer and artistic director, the Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg The company was very busy and successful in 2005, dancing for the first time in Argentina, Mexico and Canada, so I was not able to see that much. Unfortunately, most of it was so boring that I didn't sit through the end of it. Maybe I'm jealous, but I feel that the Kirov Ballet and Bolshoi Ballet are doing nothing important when it comes to new works.

THE group that traditionally presents the first big awards of the Oscar season said Wednesday it had delayed announcing its winners after questions were raised about its voting process. A spokesman for the National Board of Review downplayed the flap, explaining that voters had mistakenly been sent a memo that was mislabeled as an "eligibility list" and did not include all the 2005 films that qualified.

Congress and the White House head into the year's political and legislative homestretch facing a backlog of divisive issues that will test the ability of Republican leaders to arrest a precipitous slide in their party's fortunes. This month is, in essence, the last act of a yearlong drama that has seen the GOP plunge from giddy celebration of its 2004 election gains to a disheartened party beset by ethics problems and internal divisions.