YORK City Art Gallery curator Richard Green is moving on after nearly 26 years in the post.

He will leave the gallery at the end of March to pursue a career as an independent art historian, consultant and freelance editor, and is likely to eventually move to either London or New York for their thriving art markets.

The 56-year-old said: "I have been here for coming up to 26 years and I feel the time is right to move on to other things.

"I will remain in York for the immediate future, but in the longer term I have my eyes set on London or New York. I need to be where there is a lot of art publishing and dealing."

He said there had been peaks and troughs during his time at the gallery.

"The greatest trough was the dreadful robbery in January 1999," he said. Paintings worth about £700,000 were stolen in a terrifying armed robbery, during which staff were tied up and threatened. The 20 paintings were later recovered by police and returned and the robbers jailed.

The peaks during Mr Green's career have included some unprecedented acquisitions for a provincial gallery, including works by Turner, Hogarth and Batoni, and some ground-breaking exhibitions, including the 1980 Turner in Yorkshire exhibition, which was imitated across the UK, and the 1994 Masterpieces From Yorkshire Houses exhibition.

Staff at the gallery were told about Mr Green's plans to leave on Thursday.

He said: "I have been fortunate over the years, particularly at the moment, to enjoy working with some marvellous and extremely supportive colleagues."

Janet Barnes, chief executive of York Museums Trust, which runs the gallery, said: "We are delighted that Richard is launching himself on a new career and we thank him for the fantastic job he has done in building up the collection. We will be looking to appoint someone in a curatorial capacity in the next few months."

Updated: 09:48 Monday, January 20, 2003