Pop art, portraiture, Picasso, the independence referendum and photography are all part of the major shows to be staged by the National Galleries of Scotland next year.

The NGS has announced that its 2015 slate of shows includes the work of the photographer David Bailey, a show focussing on the relationship between the photographer Lee Miller and Pablo Picasso, and a major retrospective of the Dutch graphic artist MC Escher.

The referendum will be featured in a show called Document Scotland, which will use documentary photography to "explore the lives of people in this country either side of the recent Referendum on Independence."

Escher is known for his often monochrome depictions of impossible buildings, optical illusions and visual puzzles, but has not had a major exhibition in the UK before.

Sir John Leighton, director general of NGS, said: "The NGS has established an international reputation for the breadth and quality of its exhibitions.

"Following on from our success this year with Generation [the survey of Scottish contemporary art], we have assembled a thrilling array of shows, combining the familiar with the unfamiliar, the classic with the new to create a programme worthy of any major European capital."

Document Scotland is a photographic collective comprising of Colin McPherson, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, Sophie Gerrard and Stephen McLaren.

The exhibition from 26 September 2015 to April 2016 will take place one year after the Scottish Referendum.

It will feature 50 to 75 photographs of, and about, Scotland and its people and does not take a political stand.

A NGS statement said: "While the work touches on the political landscape around the Referendum, the images do not affirm any one position, but seek to portray a multiplicity of views that portray the complex challenges and subtle nuances surrounding the larger debate."

David Bailey's landmark exhibition Bailey's Stardust will be shown at the Scottish National Gallery (SNG) on The Mound from 18 July to 18 October.

It will feature more than 250 photographs by Bailey, with portraits selected by Bailey from the subjects and groups that he captured over the last five decades: photographers, actors, writers, musicians, filmmakers, fashion icons, designers, models, artists and people encountered on his many travels.

Lee Miller and Picasso will be at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery from 23 May to 6 September.

This exhibition will feature 100 photographs, and looks at the relationships between Lee Miller, Roland Penrose and Pablo Picasso.

Lee Miller first met Picasso in the summer of 1937 at the Hotel Vaste Horizon where she was staying with Roland Penrose. In the ensuing years she photographed the Spanish artist more than 1,000 times and he, in turn, painted her portrait six times.

The exhibition, featuring photographs by Miller and a painting and drawing by Picasso, "reveals the love and experiences of their long-lasting friendship" the NGS says.

The year will see a rehang of the permanent collection in the upper galleries of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art at Modern One.

A new show entitled Reflections will open on the ground floor.

This will include a special three-room Artist Rooms presentation dedicated to works by renowned American artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) from 14 March 2015 to 10 January 2016.

The retrospective of Escher will be held at Modern Two from 27 June to 27 September.

It will include nearly 100 prints and drawings stretching across his career, and is drawn in its entirety from the collection of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, in the Netherlands, which holds an almost complete set of Escher's prints.

It is also mounted in collaboration with the Escher in Het Paleis, a museum of Escher?s work which opened in the centre of The Hague in 2002.

Later in the year at the Modern Two gallery there will be a presentation on work by Scottish Women Artists from 7 November 2015 to 1 July 2016.

This 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.

Containing over seventy works the exhibition will include familiar masterpieces alongside important works by significant artists which are rarely seen and who are not widely known.

From 10 October 2015 to 17 January 2016 at the Scottish National Gallery, there will an exhibition on the work of the Arthur Melville, regarded as one of the finest British watercolourists of the nineteenth century.