MOCA Benefit Auction Bids to Become an L.A. Tradition : Fund-raising: The biennial event is expected to net $1 million. About 250 works will be sold.

When the final gavel falls and the last silent bid is cast at a benefit auction on Saturday night at the Temporary Contemporary, the Museum of Contemporary Art may be $1 million richer. About 250 works will be sold at the fourth biennial auction and dinner party to benefit the museum’s operations and programs.

“I just hope it does as well as our last auction,” which netted $950,000, said Bob Gersh, co-producer of the biennial affair. He isn’t making wild predictions, but his hopes are built on the museum’s reputation and increasing interest in the biennial benefit. “The MOCA auction is becoming a tradition and people really look forward to it. As the museum grows, more people get interested in its programs and want to support them,” Gersh said.

The $250-a-ticket auction and party is the museum’s major fund-raising event, providing a significant chunk of MOCA’s $7.5-million annual operating budget. The benefit is the brainchild of television producer Douglas S. Cramer, a MOCA trustee who is honorary executive producer of this year’s affair.

Since its inception in 1984, at a Princess Cruise party that included a small sale of art, the MOCA benefit has yielded steadily increasing profits. The 1984 party and auction netted $400,000. The take jumped to $700,000 in 1986 and to $950,000 in 1988.

This year’s sale will be divided into two parts, a live auction conducted by John L. Marion, chairman and chief auctioneer of Sotheby’s North America, and a silent auction with bids placed in writing. Marion will offer 62 of the most expensive pieces--valued as high as $100,000--in a live auction on Saturday beginning at 7:15 p.m. The remainder of the art works--expected to fetch from $350 to $12,000 apiece--will be sold to silent bidders.

About 155 of the artworks are donated outright, with remaining donors receiving the cost of materials or a fraction of the selling price, but never more than 50%, Gersh said. All the works in the auction went on view last weekend at the Colorado Avenue galleries in Santa Monica, where collectors began to vie for relatively low-priced works by posting bids on sheets of paper. The preview exhibition will move downtown to the Temporary Contemporary (152 N. Central Ave.) this week. The show will be open to the public today from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. and Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Museum visitors may place silent bids during viewing hours. Silent bidding will continue to 10 p.m. on Saturday.

“You can’t tell how the auction is going to develop while you’re working on it, but when I saw the art in the galleries, I said, ‘Wow. There are some things I’d like to have here,’ ” said Gersh, who comes from a collecting family.

Among the “wow” pieces in the auction are a 1988 acrylic abstraction by Sam Francis (valued at $80,000 to $100,000); Bruce Nauman’s 1990 drawing, “Head and Shrunken Head ($35,000 to $40,000); Malcolm Morley’s watercolor, “Coconut Grove” ($18,000 to $22,000); a life-size bronze coyote by Gwynn Murrill ($18,000 to $22,000); Robert Mapplethorpe’s photograph, “Jill Chapman & Ken Moody” ($10,000 to $12,000); a welded steel sculpture by Mark Lere ($10,000 to $12,000) and a Sol Lewitt gouache, “Form Derived From a Cube Rectangle” ($7,000 to $9,000).

Artists, dealers and collectors have pitched in to offer works by about 235 artists including Ed Ruscha, Tom Wesselmann, Cindy Sherman, Alison Saar, Jim Morphesis and Judith Simonian. The roster of art encompasses a clock by George Herms, a colored pencil drawing of pears by Martha Alf, an abstract wood sculpture by Mel Kendrick, an enamel on metal sign by Jenny Holzer and a color photograph by Paul Outerbridge.

Deborah McLeod, director of BlumHelman Gallery, and attorney Alan Hergott co-chaired the auction committee that solicited donations of artworks. They have assembled a selective group of contemporary artworks, including pieces by artists who have recently emerged on the art scene.

The party, including a dinner catered by Rococo, is under the direction of Aviva Covitz, Adele Yellin and Judy Henning. For ticket information, call the MOCA Special Events Department at (213) 621-1748.