NEW ORLEANS
Even after fetid floodwater receded from the Southern University at New Orleans campus, the soggy artifacts in its collection of African art marinated for months in dark, dank buildings.
Intricate patterns carved on a drum were barely visible beneath a film of mold. Mold had blackened raffia that sprouted like hair from tribal masks, and it had eaten away at shackles and chains in a plastic storage chest that was full to the brim with a thick, viscous, yellow-brown broth.
“I wasn’t putting my hand in there,” Linda Hill, the collection’s curator, said of that box. “I love what I do, but this was beyond me.”
On some pieces, mold colonies grew straight up, looking like wispy weeds.
“I never knew mold could grow like that,” Hill said. “This was science-fiction mold.”
