Paul F. Oreffice, who as the pugnacious head of Dow Chemical grew and diversified the company at the same time that he rebuffed Vietnam veterans over Agent Orange, argued that the chemical dioxin was harmless and oversaw the manufacturing of silicone breast implants that were known to leak, died on Dec. 26 at his home in Paradise Valley, Ariz. He was 97.

His family confirmed his death.

Mr. Oreffice (pronounced like orifice) spoke in staccato, fast-paced sentences, and they were often deployed in pushing back against environmentalists, politicians and journalists during an era, the 1970s and ’80s, when the environmental movement was gaining force by focusing on toxic chemicals in the air and water.

Under his 17-year leadership, which included the titles of president, chief executive and chairman, Mr. Oreffice weathered intense controversies.

His public relations instinct was for confrontation, not conciliation. He had an intense dislike for what he perceived as government meddling in business, which he traced to his having grown up in Italy under Mussolini. “I’ve seen what overgoverning can do,” he told The New York Times in 1987. “I was born under a Fascist dictatorship, and my father was jailed by it.”

Mr. Oreffice took the reins of the Dow USA division in 1975, when its public image was tainted from campus protests of the 1960s that had vilified the company as a maker of the incendiary agent napalm, which was widely used in Vietnam.

When Dow pulled out of apartheid South Africa in 1987 under pressure from shareholders, Mr. Oreffice said: “I’m not proud of it. I think we should have stayed and fought.”

In 1977, when Jane Fonda lacerated Dow in a speech at Central Michigan University, not far from Dow headquarters, in Midland, Mich., Mr. Oreffice canceled the company’s donations to the school, writing its president that he could not support Ms. Fonda’s “venom against free enterprise.”

Instead, Mr. Oreffice financed the campaigns of anti-regulation politicians. And he sued the Environmental Protection Agency for surveilling Dow’s sprawling Midland plants from the air when the company refused an on-site inspection.

The case made its way to the United States Supreme Court, which in 1986 ruled against the company, at the time the No. 2 American chemical maker after DuPont. (The companies merged in 2017, then split into three companies.)

In 1983, Rep. James H. Scheuer, Democrat of New York, disclosed that Dow had been allowed to edit an E.P.A. report on the leakage of dioxin, one of the most toxic substances ever manufactured, from the Midland plants into the Tittabawassee and Saginaw Rivers and Saginaw Bay.

E.P.A. regional officials told Congress that their superiors in the Reagan administration ordered the changes to comply with demands made by Dow. Mr. Oreffice, appearing on NBC’s “Today” show, offered a sweeping dismissal.

“There is absolutely no evidence of dioxin doing any damage to humans except for causing something called chloracne,” he said. “It’s a rash.”

His statement brushed aside evidence that dioxin was extremely hazardous to laboratory animals and had been shown in some research to be linked with a rare soft-tissue cancer in humans.

One former Dow president, Herbert Dow Doan, a grandson of the company founder, told a public relations publication, Provoke Media, in 1990 that Mr. Oreffice’s style was not one fine-tuned to mollify critics. “The reason is part ego, part pride,” he said. “Paul is inclined to push his line to the point where some people say he is arrogant.”

There is no question that Mr. Oreffice’s strength of will also uplifted Dow’s businesses, which through the 1970s were overly dependent on basic chemicals like chlorine. When a glut of low-priced petrochemicals flooded the global market in the early 80s, he aggressively reshaped Dow by diversifying into consumer products, such as shampoos and the cleaning fluid Fantastik, and by moving into foreign markets. By 1987, Dow posted a record profit of $1.3 billion (about $3.5 billion in today’s currency).

At the same time, a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 20,000 Vietnam veterans and their families against Dow and other makers of Agent Orange was further tarnishing the company’s image. The suit, filed in 1979, charged that dioxin in Agent Orange led to cancer in combat veterans and genetic defects in their children.

Dow argued that it had made Agent Orange at the request of the government and was not responsible for how it was used. But in 1984, the company and other makers of Agent Orange, without admitting liability, settled the lawsuit for $180 million, with the proceeds going to veterans and their families.

In another controversy, Dow Corning, a joint venture between Dow Chemical and Corning Inc., released documents in February 1992 showing that it had known since 1971 that silicone gel could leak from breast implants it made.

Tens of thousands of women had sued the company, claiming their implants had given them breast cancer and autoimmune diseases. Dow Corning agreed to a $3.2 billion settlement after the company had been driven to file for bankruptcy protection.

In 1999, an independent review by an arm of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that silicone implants do not cause major diseases.

Paul Fausto Orrefice was born Nov. 29, 1927, in Venice. His parents, Max and Elena (Friedenberg) Oreffice, moved the family to Ecuador in 1940 as Mussolini declared war on Britain and France. Paul came to the U.S. in 1945, entering Purdue University with fewer than 50 words of English at his command.

He graduated with a B.S. in chemical engineering in 1949, became a naturalized citizen, and after two years in the Army went to work for Dow in 1953.

“When I walked into Midland, Mich., this was ‘WASP’ country, and I was a ‘W’ but I wasn’t an ‘ASP,’” he told The Washington Post in 1986. “I spoke with an accent and combed my hair straight back, which just wasn’t done.”

Mr. Oreffice represented Dow in Switzerland, Italy, Brazil and Spain before being called back to the Midland headquarters in 1969 and appointed the company’s financial vice president. He became president of Dow Chemical U.S.A. in 1975 and was then promoted to president and chief executive of the parent Dow Chemical Company in 1978. In 1986, he added the title of chairman.

To the astonishment of many observers, Dow poured millions of dollars in the mid-1980s into a public-relations campaign to improve its image, including a new slogan, “Dow let’s you do great things.”

Under company rules, when he reached age 60, Mr. Oreffice stepped down as president and chief executive in 1987. He retired as chairman in 1992.

He is survived by his wife of 29 years, Jo Ann Pepper Oreffice, his children Laura Jennison and Andy Oreffice, six grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.

In retirement, Mr. Oreffice pursued a passion for thoroughbred racehorses, investing in Kentucky Derby starters and spending summers at a home in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He was a partner in a Preakness Stakes winner, Summer Squall, and a Belmont Stakes winner, Palace Malice.

In 2006, he published a memoir about rising from an immigrant with little English to a corporate titan, titling it “Only in America.”

When art works fetch spectacular auction prices, like the record $450.3 million for Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” in 2017, the world’s focus turns for a moment to the arcane goings-on of the international art trade. But with the market in a downturn for the last two years, there have been few attention-grabbing sales at the world’s two biggest and oldest auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

An exception came at November’s marquee auctions of modern and contemporary art in New York, when the world’s media — and social media in particular — were momentarily enthralled by the seeming absurdity of a cryptocurrency investor spending $6.2 million at Sotheby’s for a duct-taped banana. But there is a big difference between $6.2 million and $450.3 million.

Sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s were down for the second year in a row in 2024, according to preliminary figures released by the companies in December. With both supply and demand for big-ticket art in a slump, the auction houses are making major bets on selling luxury goods and niche experiences to make up the shortfall.

Sotheby’s estimated it would have turned over about $6 billion in auction and private sales by year-end, a decline of 24 percent on 2023. Christie’s announced projected aggregate sales of $5.7 billion, down 6 percent year-on-year. Back in 2022, Sotheby’s and Christie’s posted annual turnover of $8 billion and $8.4 billion.

“The auction houses have major problems,” said Christine Bourron, the chief executive of the London-based company Pi-eX, which analyzes art sale results. “They really need to do some thinking about how they can bring some life into their auction business. People who have an interest in art want to have an experience,” added Bourron, who, like many followers of the auction market, finds both Sotheby’s and Christie’s live and online sales increasingly predictable.

Sotheby’s is owned by the French-Israeli telecoms magnate Patrick Drahi, whose beleaguered Altice group is burdened with $60 billion of debt. Sotheby’s deteriorating performance led the auction house to reach out to Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, A.D.Q., for a $1 billion cash-for-equity bailout and to lay off more than 100 employees in December. This followed some costly infrastructure decisions: Sotheby’s $100-million purchase of the Breuer Building in New York’s Madison Avenue, the opening of a new headquarters in Paris and the development of a futuristic exhibition and retail space in Hong Kong.

Sotheby’s website now abounds with opportunities to buy pre-owned luxury items at auction or by “instant purchase,” as if in a store, ranging from real estate, classic cars and dinosaur fossils, to smaller prestige collectibles like designer handbags, jewelry, fine wines and game-worn N.B.A. jerseys.

Josh Pullan, Sotheby’s global head of luxury, said sales of such goods draw in wealthy clients who may, in time, start to buy high-end art. “Luxury categories are for us a vital gateway for new, often younger, collectors,” he added.

Last year, luxury generated about 33 percent of sales at Sotheby’s, compared with 16 percent at Christie’s, according to the companies’ communications teams. But the category attracted more buyers than art did.

Guillaume Cerutti, the chief executive of Christie’s, spoke to reporters last month during an end-of-year media call. “Luxury has an advantage, because of the model and the price points,” he said. “Luxury and art will merge with each other,” he added, hinting at future synergies of presentation and categorization.

Christie’s is owned by the luxury goods billionaire François-Henri Pinault, whose Kering conglomerate has also been hit by flagging sales. After introducing handbag auctions back in 2014, Christie’s is now having to catch up with Sotheby’s offering of luxury items and trophy collectibles, like dinosaur skeletons. In September, Christie’s announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire the California-based classic car auctioneers Gooding & Co., setting up a rivalry with Sotheby’s car business, RM Sotheby’s, which last year turned over $887 million in classic auto sales.

“The luxury resale market presents a compelling opportunity for auction houses,” said Daniel Langer, a professor of luxury strategy at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. “Storytelling is a critical success factor in the luxury industry. Auction houses excel in this area — take the recent banana auction as an example,” he added. Sotheby’s marketing, like that of a luxury brand, had skilfully woven a narrative around the sensation that the banana sculpture, by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, created when first exhibited at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair in 2019.

However, this opportunity comes with “significant challenges,” according to Langer. He pointed out that unlike luxury brands, auction houses don’t produce and price all of their own inventory; profit margins on new luxury items are often much higher than their resold equivalents; and unlike conglomerates such as LVMH and Kering, auction houses can’t scale their transactions through a network of retail outlets. These disparities between retail and resale “could limit the overall financial impact of luxury for auction houses,” he said.

Changing spending patterns among the wealthy could also affect demand.

Global sales of luxury flatlined in 2024 for the first time since 2008 (excluding 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic), according to a recent report by the management consultants Bain & Co. The report’s authors said consumers were prioritizing “experiences over products” in these uncertain times and that the luxury goods market, rather like the art market, is suffering from buyer fatigue.

“The super-wealthy in their 30s, 40s and 50s are spending their money on luxury experiences,” said Doug Woodham, a former Christie’s executive who now advises on art-related finance. “That’s money that isn’t being spent on a Matisse drawing,” he added.

“With superluxury experiences, the social cache is so much higher,” said Woodham, who pioneered handbag sales at Christie’s in 2014. “For half a million dollars I can have my 10 best friends on a lavish yacht. They will remember that more than sitting in my house with a Rothko on the wall.”

The global luxury yacht charter market grew to an all-time high of $16.3 billion in 2024, a 6 percent increase on the previous year, according to the Business Research Company. It said that growth has been driven by the popularity of “exclusive and exotic travel destinations” and the “ongoing trend towards experiential luxury.”

In September, Sotheby’s collaborated with the Marriott International hotel chain and the fashion house Alexander McQueen to offer a sealed bid auction, in which bidders can’t see the rival offers. The winner got a two-night stay one of the group’s 5-star London sites as part of an experience that the Sotheby’s website said would “transport guests to where a teenaged McQueen first learned the art of tailoring.” Also included were a five-course fine-dining meal for two, a bespoke tour of London with a private visit to the Victoria & Albert Museum and a personalized photo session with Ann Ray, a longtime McQueen collaborator. Classifying the auction as a private sale, Sotheby’s declined to reveal how much the winning bidder paid for this unique luxury experience, but the presale estimate was $12,000 to $18,000.

Could selling memories, instead of art, be the future of the auction business?