A family who made their fortune from the travel industry have donated £1m to the redevelopment of Scotland�s national museum.

A family who made their fortune from the travel industry have donated £1m to the redevelopment of Scotland's national museum.

The Moffat Charitable Trust, set up by the Moffat family of Ayrshire best known for running the travel firm AT Mays, has given the money to National Museums Scotland to help fund its £46m revamp of the Royal Museum.

National Museums Scotland will now launch an Ayrshire Outreach Project, which will bring artefacts from its extensive collections, as well as experts and academics, to Ayrshire as a result of the deal between the Trust and the museums.

Jamie Moffat, chairman of The Moffat Charitable Trust said: "The Moffat Charitable Trust is thrilled to offer our support to National Museums Scotland.

"In line with our values, the Royal Museum Project will create an environment dedicated to children, community, education and art, and as such, we are willing to throw our full support behind this ambitious redevelopment.

"With a new Ayrshire Outreach Project, the National Collections will be much more accessible to the people of Ayrshire, and we are pleased that we can help to extend the benefits the new museum will bring to a wider community."

The Moffat Charitable Trust was established in 1999 by Margie Moffat, co-founder of AT Mays travel agency, a year after the death of her husband Jim at the age of 78.

AT Mays began when Mrs Moffat and her late husband started a small ticket agency in Saltcoats in the 1950s, and it grew into one of the big four travel companies in the UK.

With the £1m from the Moffat Charitable Trust, the total raised for the project is more than £41m.

Just under £5m is required to complete the funding of the redevelopment of the landmark Victorian building on Edinburgh's Chambers Street.

Dr Gordon Rintoul, director of National Museums Scotland, said he was delighted with the donation, and said that the outreach project, which will start in 2010, could prove to be a model for how the national museums work with regional and local communities in the future.

No details have been confirmed on what exactly the outreach service will include, but Dr Rintoul said it was part of an effort to make sure the people of Scotland feel the national museum's collections are open and accessible.

"The outreach project was part of our discussions with the Moffat Charitable Trust, and we already have a good relationship with East Ayrshire Museums in place, but this will broaden to the rest of Ayrshire - hopefully it will become a bit of a pilot for work in other areas of the country," he said.

"It might involve touring exhibitions and the showing of our expertise, but we want to develop it with the people of Ayrshire too, and we will be meeting groups there to discuss what we can do: we want to sit down and create these things together."

He added: "We're delighted that The Royal Museum Project is receiving such enthusiastic and widespread support.

"It is only with the help of partners like these that we can deliver this project, for the benefit of the people of Scotland and beyond."

The Royal Museum building partially closed in April for three years of restoration and redevelopment.

The rest of the museum complex remains open - including the new gallery that opened in July, Scotland: A Changing Nation.