“Painting is such an ordinary thing.” That was my initial observation upon entering the mid-career survey of the Pakistan-born artist Shahzia Sikander. This thought occurred without my having registered the “extraordinary” claim found in the exhibition title. As it turns out, the Morgan is right. Sikander is an extraordinary—or, at least, atypical—artist: a miniaturist in an age of multimedia showpieces; a painter during a time when art is embracing the virtual when it isn’t dominating a lot of square footage. Sikander has an uphill row to hoe in a culture of post-everything abundance. It’s understandable that an artist given to virtuosic fantasies that are hardly bigger than a sheet of printer paper should feel the need to make some kind of splash. Take the opening gambit of “Extraordinary Realities”: it isn’t a painting, but a sizable bronze sculpture reiterating motifs found in the paintings. The exhibition centerpiece is a floor-to-ceiling, back-to-front arrangement of paper, fabric, and ideograms. Sikander isn’t the first painter to capitulate to the installation ethos; it’s a run-of-the-mill tack. Do such nods to theatricality prompt genuine engagement with the accompanying pictures? That’s the nagging question.

An additional observation prompted by “Extraordinary Realities” goes to the wall labels accompanying Sikander’s paintings. Text has long been an adjunct to displays of contemporary art. “Didactics,” as they are known in the trade, are touted as an educational tool that provides context for audiences in need of a hand. The truth is that most contemporary art can’t be fathomed without