Gary Nickard successfully courts two seemingly opposed mistresses in his exhibition entitled “Science as Spectacle.” Indeed, the show’s pristine sterility seems attuned to both the temper of the art market and the imperatives of the laboratory. Not a lab rat is out of place, including the audience.

Some of the more delicate or dangerous apparatuses in the exhibition are labeled with the words “Please do not touch,” a warning that no one is likely to ignore. Who would dare tamper with these careful displays of tubing, circuitry, and filaments? Ripped out of context, the equipment looks more