I've had to deal with mold more than I care to discuss.
The key is to keep humidity down (relative to temperature). There is a concept of "Days till Mold" growth. Once you're past this number all bets are off.
Here is a chart that shows Days to growth. If museums can stay in the "no risk" zone then artifacts should be good. If they fall outside that zone, then artifacts are at risk.
https://energyhandyman.com/knowledge-library/mold-chart-for-...
Example: At 85'F and 84% Humidity, it will take 7 days for mold to grow into your nostrils and reach your brain.
I'm not sure you read the article, these are molds that love low humidity. Controlling for humidity made these environments more attractive, not less.
The most interesting part of the article to me was that there's something akin the dysbiosis seen post-antibiotics in the human gut
> Through the 1970s conservators deployed biocides, chemicals—including antibiotics and formaldehyde—that wipe out microbes indiscriminately. [...] But just as broad-spectrum antibiotics can wreak havoc on the human gut by eliminating good bacteria along with the bad, biocides can open the door to even more harmful microbes by clearing out the competition.
> Scientists think decades of treatment with biocides in Lascaux led to the proliferation of a fungus called Fusarium solani that covered the cave like snow in a matter of days. The biocides are also thought to have allowed antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria and fungi to grow unchecked in the cave, as well as pigmented fungi that left permanent dark stains on the Ice Age images. In Europe, the use of biocides is now tightly restricted.
This seems to have ramnifications far beyond the museum:
> Xerophilic molds can colonize human tissue in immunocompromised people—doctors found colonies of Aspergillus fumigatus, another mold involved in museum infestations, in one Danish woman’s brain, chest and lungs after she had been treated for leukemia in the contaminated wards.
Idea: For long-term storage & preservation of rare "treasures" (whether they be museums pieces, library books, national archive documents, or whoever), invest in oxygen-depleted facilities. At low-enough O2, nothing aerobic - be it bacteria, mold, bug, rodent, or whatever - can grow. Most can't even live. Gradual oxidation damage (paper turning yellow then brown, etc.) ceases. And disastrous fires can't happen.
xerophiles can also be anaerobic. Certain Aspergillus can even show certain adaptations for anaerobic conditions. I wonder if we would just be pushing their evolution in that direction
EDIT: Aspergillus penicillioides is mentioned in the article and it can survive in both anaerobic and aerobic conditions
The car guys have done it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stfjVt0AbFU
From the perspective of an archive, library, or museum preservation isn't really the goal in itself, just a strictly mandatory prerequisite. The pieces have to be made available to researchers (and depending on the institution the public) for the archive to be able to consider itself fulfilling its mission.
There is kind of a cost/preservation/accessibility triangle with curatorial preservation, and museums already normally choose storage that is somewhere other than the most expensive/best preservation corner of that triangle. Oxygen-depleted facilities significantly extend that corner, but if we're already not using what we have there then it may not be a useful addition.
Low-oxygen environments also have their own preservation issues. I'm not actually a museum curator so I don't know the specifics. But it is a very complex and old discipline and they've tried just about everything. The problem is usually funding, which unfortunately boils this whole thing down to another boring "you can't solve social problems with technical solutions."
What is the social problem you refer to?
Presumably society doesn't deem preservation to be worth any cost.
There are other considerations as well. We could probably preserve works for longer if we kept them sealed away in darkness, but we value these works in part because of what we get by experiencing them. What we get out of them as artistic works makes them worth taking such good care of as opposed to just being something that's really really old.
Society wants to see these things, and learn from them, even though every moment they spend out in the open exposes them to more harms.
We're fortunate that digitizing has come such a long way. We can preserve and even recreate a lot of things long after the physical objects themselves are gone. It's not the same as having the originals, but at a certain point the reproductions are all we'll have left.
It will make retrieval challenging and dangerous.
"stigma and climate change have fueled their spread"
vomit
Not vomit, xerophilic mold infestations.
The stigma they refer to is the reluctance of museum boards and higher ups to public admit they have a problem with their storage.
Submerge them in drawers filled with Argon or Xenon gas when filing them away. This would also help to fireproof the artifacts.
How about a tar pit
And yet, the curators, when told to give the stolen museum pieces back, always retort, "But we take care of these items in ways the savages in the countries where we stole them from would be incapable of."