Museum Cancels Auction

The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry has canceled its auction, one of the oldest fund-raising events of its kind and annually one of the most glittering social events in Portland.

The financial crisis that threatens the museum’s survival has diverted the attention of the scaled-down OMSI work force.

“We have a financial problem, and we’re devoting every resource we can to fixing it,” said OMSI President Edward Gibson.

The two-day auction, held each October for the past 35 years, needs the attention of 10 to 15 staff members to prepare, Gibson said, and the museum simply can’t spare the help.

OMSI has cut the equivalent of 44 full-time positions since October, saving about $1 million in the process.

The auction netted more than $190,000 last year, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared with the $12 million the museum needs to pay off bonds issued in 1991 to finance OMSI’s new home on the east bank of the Willamette River.

The museum is preparing to resume its stalled OMSI 2000 fund-raising campaign, which has a goal of $12 million in the next 18 months.

In addition, Gibson and his staff are studying program cuts that would reduce annual expenses by $800,000 and new programs that would bring in another $800,000.

Meanwhile, OMSI’s creditors, who are owed nearly $33 million, have agreed to let the museum skip as many as six months of payments - totaling more than $1 million - as long as they are made up within a year.

The first evening of the auction was informal and featured everything from neon beer signs to a year’s worth of bread. The second evening was a pricey, black-tie event at which bidders dined on breast of duck and bid thousands of dollars on big-ticket items such as jet trips to Argentina and a fly-fishing trip with the governor.

“What has been done in the past has been exceptionally well done,” Gibson said.

But he worried that such a lavish production would create the wrong perception while OMSI is battling for its financial life.

Gibson said the auction probably will return in a form that would make it stand out from the large number of events of its kind that have sprung up since OMSI pioneered the art form in 1959.