How about gamma irradiation?

Would a high enough dose of UV also work? I suppose it would ruin most pigmentation too, though.

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."

It will make retrieval challenging and dangerous.

Nitrogen should do just as well.

The hazard is if the inert gas displaces oxygen in the storage facility. That can make them a death trap.

Xenon is quite expensive.

How about a tar pit

That destroys any possibility of finding out if there was or is life on other planets. Life that would be better evolved to handle the conditions.

It is also unlikely to do anything. The conditions are well beyond anything on Earth. Mars is near vacuum; life has survived in vacuum but didn't grow. Titan has liquid organics, but is really cold and microorganisms don't really handle hydrocarbons.

I didn't downvote you. However, there are ethical and moral quandaries to doing that. What if you accidentally wipe out existing, undetected life on that planet?

You aren't going to see anything "take hold" on a human timescale. Evolution takes place over geological time. By the time there's something to observe, there might be no one to observe it. Or all knowledge of the experiment might be lost.

I know this is an unpopular idea. But it's the right thing to do.

Not vomit, xerophilic mold infestations.

The stigma they refer to is the reluctance of museum boards and higher ups to publicly admit they have a problem with their storage.

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 article is literally about how the efforts to keep humidity down have resulted in the growth of these extremophiles.