Timothy Potts, who recently resigned as director of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, will become director of the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England, museum officials announced Thursday.

Dr. Potts came to the Kimbell in 1998 from the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne in his native Australia. He was out of town Thursday and unavailable for comment but said last week that he hoped to stay at the Kimbell until September.

Potts

Dr. Potts, 48, is married and the father of two young children, who attend school in the Fort Worth area.

In a statement released Thursday, the Oxford-educated Dr. Potts said: "The Fitzwilliam is highly regarded throughout Europe and is one of Britain's greatest cultural treasures. I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to join its distinguished staff and very fortunate to do so at a time when the museum has been invigorated by the new gallery spaces and other initiatives of Duncan Robinson," whom Dr. Potts is succeeding.

The Fitzwilliam Museum houses art and antiquities and also serves as a public museum and gallery.

While Kimbell director, Dr. Potts helped the museum acquire several significant new pieces, especially in sculpture, such as St. John the Baptist by Michelozzo, Virgin and Child by Donatello and Modello for the Fountain of the Moor by Bernini.

But he also said it has become increasingly difficult for museums such as the Kimbell to acquire new works of art, paintings in particular, because of the high cost.

He alluded to the recent sale of a 1950 painting by U.S. abstract expressionist Mark Rothko for $72.8 million, a record price for post-World War II art.