Extremophile Schimmelpilze dringen in Kunstmuseen ein und verschlingen ihre Sammlungen

„Asking a curator if their museum has problems with mold is like asking if they have a sexually transmitted disease. It’s contagious, it’s taboo, and it carries the inevitable implication someone has done something naughty.“

[…]

„These molds—called xerophiles—can survive in dry, hostile environments such as volcano calderas and scorching deserts, and to the chagrin of curators across the world, they seem to have developed a taste for cultural heritage. They devour the organic material that abounds in museums—from fabric canvases and wood furniture to tapestries. They can also eke out a living on marble statues and stained-glass windows by eating micronutrients in the dust that accumulates on their surfaces. And global warming seems to be helping them spread.“

[…]

„That leaves conservators with only a basic tool kit for containing a fungal outbreak: quarantine infested objects, vacuum off the worst of the mold, and treat affected items with ethanol when possible. That’s what they ultimately had to do at the Roskilde Museum, the Danish institution where Bastholm found the xerophiles.“

Article is pretty interesting overall.