Miracle Scene @NatGalleriesSco

An early start on a wintry morning to get over to Edinburgh for a briefing about the National Galleries of Scotland's (NGS) 2015 programme.

A small group of journalists and curators from NGS gathered in Director-General Sir John Leighton's Timorous Beasties-wallpaper clad office in Modern Two (formerly the Dean Gallery) for the Big Reveal.

I took this picture on the way in. Nathan Coley's neon artwork There Will Be No Miracles Here is very well placed - looks good in all weathers.

This building used to be an orphanage and I always think of the motherless and fatherless bairns who passed through it when I visit. There are wee seats just inside the entrance where children presumably sat when they first arrived in this imposing Victorian edifice. Imagine how cold it would be for them on a day like today?

The 2015 NGS programme is an interesting and varied one spanning all three NGS sites in Edinburgh. It ranges from photography to pop art, portraiture and neglected geniuses.

There's a summer slot in the centrally-located Scottish National Gallery for a major portrait exhibition of the work of a photographer, David Bailey.

Other major photography shows include the only UK showing of Lee Miller and Picasso; while Document Scotland uses documentary photography to explore the lives of people in this country either side of the recent Referendum.

Another first is a major retrospective of M.C. Escher, the Dutch graphic artist, whom I have to confess I knew very little about. John Leighton says he had a poster of one of his complex visual puzzles on his walls as a student while Herald arts editor, Alan Morrison, who was sitting beside me, made comparisons between the complex world of modern day video games.

I think he might be a very boy-friendly artist...

This is the first time a major exhibition of Escher's work to be shown in the UK.
I'm very excited about the exhibition of eighteenth century Swiss artist Jean-Étienne Liotard - and any opportunity to see US mid-twentieth century pop artist, Roy Lichtenstein, is to be welcomed with both arms. I had a poster of his In The Car painting in my room when I was a student!

There's also going to be a show at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art devoted to Scottish Women Artists, particularly little known - or forgotten artists.
It will concentrate on painters and sculptors, from Catherine Read of the eighteenth century, to Amelia Hill and the Nasmyth sisters of the mid-nineteenth century, to Joan Eardley and Anne Redpath, who both died in the 1960s.

Maybe no Miracles here, but a programme guaranteed to warm the cockles of any art lover's heart.