There was that ubiquitous four letter word again.

“Cuts” were a feature of museums all over Britain said the report published last week. Some of over 25%, resulting in shorter hours, fewer days and staff redundancies. Yet amidst that gathering gloom let’s pause for real reasons to be cheerful. For in just this present calendar year, Scotland will celebrate the opening of three new or dramatically re-invented museum venues.

I’ve just had look at the magnificently refurbished National Museum of Scotland which opens to the public this Friday.

Here is a building which has finally resolved its identity crisis. Formerly it traded under the Royal Museum of Scotland, or, to local cabbies, the Chambers Street museum. That became both confusing and anomalous when the linking Museum of Scotland was built on an adjacent site 13 yearsa ago. Now both comfortably share the same brand, and can cheerfully cross fertilise their wares.

But while the newer museum gained international plaudits for its dramatic exterior, the marvels of its venerable other half lie behind that more daunting Victorian frontage. Two new street level entrances usher you into a vaulted space lined with original stonework running the length of the grand gallery above, and transformed by the simple but effective expedient of lowering the floor by a metre.

One of the bonuses of the enforced three-and-a-half-year closure has been the opportunity for curators to liberate buried treasures – exhibits which lay untroubled by the public gaze in often casually labelled storage crates. The result is that 80% of the artefacts in the 16 new galleries are displayed for the first time.

The intermingling of national innovation and international heritage speaks volumes about generations of globe trotting Scots whose adventures failed to cut their emotional ties to the land of their birth. Pride of place in the grand gallery goes to a quite enormous feast bowl from Papua New Guinea, part of the dowry brought to her Scottish husband by his royal bride. But outwith the obvious Scottish connections, lie serendipitous bequests like the extraordinary collection of world musical instruments collected by Jean Jenkins, wife of union leader Clive, and gifted to Scotland through a personal friendship with a curator.

Perennial favourites remain, not least the animals and fish restored by resident taxidermists, though a dinosaur suffered the indignity of being disassembled then rebuilt by a US team who apparently specialise in that sort of thing.

Opening just before the Festival season, the National Museum should get a well deserved visitor boost, just as Glasgow’s new Riverside Museum of Transport has enjoyed during the Scottish school holidays. Some 300,000 souls went through its doors this past month alone.

Still to come this year, the makeover of The Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, whose new interior has brought fresh light and structural innovation to what were once gloomy interiors. All three of these new beginnings are a tribute to the energy and commitment of people who kept the faith throughout everything the fiscal crisis threw at them. All three projects engaged architects with international reputations. And all three will ultimately repay the public investment in terms of tourist footfall and national reputation.

Perhaps more importantly, all have given new homes and a secure future to collections which too often languished in storage. The National Portrait Gallery will give breathing and archival space to a photography collection, in addition to liberating contextual paintings from the National Gallery. The Riverside Museum, has revitalised the history of an area whose industrial links with transportation evoke so many memories for Scots.

And now, from this Friday, the National Museum of Scotland will let Scots look at the world through the eyes of its intrepid ancestors, and give the visiting world a glimpse of the pioneering, inventive nature of our well travelled nation.

It would be idle to pretend the chill winds of austerity will not blow through Scotland’s cultural quarters. But here are three large footprints walking towards a more confident future.