James (Jack) Daulton (born October 30, 1956), also known as Nyi Nyi Min (Burmese: ညီညီမင်း), is an American art collector, trial lawyer, music entrepreneur, exploration philanthropist, and expert and lecturer on the history of art and architecture. Daulton rose to fame representing the nation of Myanmar in the groundbreaking 1994 legal case, United States v. Richard Diran and The Union of Myanmar, successfully recovering a 1,000-year-old Buddha statue that had been stolen in 1988 from a temple in Myanmar's ancient capital, Bagan, a treasure now on display in the National Museum in Yangon. This was the first cultural property claim litigated by a Southeast Asian nation in the United States. Daulton has also gained recognition as a result of The Daulton Collection–his vast art collection which includes one of the world's largest private collections of German Symbolist art and, in particular, the world's largest private collection of works by a number of individual artists, such as the eccentric monkey painter Gabriel von Max, the Austrian symbolist Rudolf Jettmar, and the German illustrator, painter, and proto-hippie Fidus. Among The Daulton Collection's highlights are masterpieces of symbolist portraiture, including Karl Gussow's Portrait of the Novelist Ossip Schubin (1887), Rudolf Jettmar's Self-Portrait of the Young Artist (1896), and Oskar Zwintscher's The Woman in Hamster (Portrait of the Artist's Wife, Adele, wearing a Hamster Jacket) (1914), currently on long-term loan to the Albertinum, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, the museum of modern art in Dresden. In 2021, a painting from The Daulton Collection, Gabriel von Max's Abelard and Heloise, was the "face" of the major exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, "Les Origines du Monde: L'invention de la nature au XIXe siècle" ("The Origins of the World: The Invention of Nature in the 19th Century").Laura Bossi, ed., Les Origines du Monde: L'invention de la Nature au XIXe Siecle [The Origins of the World: The Invention of Nature in the 19th Century] (Paris: Musée d’Orsay / Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal / Muséum national d’histoire naturelle / Gallimard, 2020) (exhibition catalogue) (editions in French and in English) In addition, Daulton is well known as an expert on non-western art, architecture, and religion, and acclaimed for his many lectures on those subjects for institutions such as National Geographic, The American Museum of Natural History, and The Art Institute of Chicago. He is also well known for his activity in exploration philanthropy, funding research expeditions around the globe, from archaeological digs in the Peruvian Andes to language documentation projects on remote atolls in Micronesia. And as an art and entertainment lawyer in the 1990s, Daulton developed the major-label rock band Kill Hannah, among other recording artists.
Early life and education
Born in San Francisco, California, Daulton is of English-Scottish and Spanish descent. On his father's side, Daulton's family had settled in British America by the 17th century; and he is a direct descendant of American Revolutionary War soldier Moses Daulton (1760–1819), who enlisted at the age of 15 (3rd Virginia Regiment, Continental Army) and fought at the Battle of Trenton (1776), among other engagements. On his mother's side, Daulton's grandparents, Antonio Espinosa Perez and Josefa Aragon Rodriguez, were Andalusian, from small villages in the Province of Granada, Spain; in 1907, as part of the Spanish immigration to Hawaii, their families relocated to Hawai'i (the Big Island), where they paid off their passage by laboring for three years in the sugarcane plantations before moving to California.S.S. Heliopolis, "List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the U.S. Immigration Officer at Port of Arrival," sailing from Malaga, Spain, arriving at Port of Honolulu, April 26, 1907
Daulton attended Wheeling High School in Wheeling, Illinois, where he was a valedictorian of his graduating class in 1974.The Wheeling Herald, Wheeling, Illinois, June 10, 1974, page 12. He received his B.S., with honors, from the University of California at Berkeley in 1978 and his J.D. from the UC Berkeley School of Law in 1981. Later, in the early 1990s, Daulton attended graduate school at Northern Illinois University where he studied the history of Southeast Asian art under the supervision of Professor Richard Cooler, then Director of the U. S. Center for Burma studies, and, having been awarded a FLAS fellowship, studied the Burmese language under the supervision of Professor Saya U Saw Tun. Daulton's classmates in art history at NIU included Alexandra Green, now curator for Southeast Asia at the British Museum, London, and Jennifer Tonkovich, now Eugene and Clare Thaw Curator of Drawings and Prints at the Morgan Library & Museum, New York. During his time at NIU, Daulton undertook fieldwork in Myanmar and India, researching, documenting, and publishing, in the Journal of Burma Studies, the story of the Relics of Sariputta and Moggallana, the Buddha's two chief disciples, at the Kaba Aye Pagoda in Yangon, Myanmar.Jack Daulton, "Sariputta and Moggallana in the Golden Land: The Relics of the Buddha's Chief Disciples at the Kaba Aye Pagoda," The Journal of Burma Studies, Vol. 4, 1999, at 101-128, https://www.niu.edu/burma/publications/jbs/vol4/Abstract4_DaultonOpt.pdf
Legal Case Recovering Stolen Buddha
In 1995, as a cultural property lawyer, Daulton recovered a 1000-year-old Buddha statue that had been stolen from a temple in Bagan, Myanmar.
In 1988, in Myanmar (Burma), during a period of civil unrest associated with the burgeoning democracy movement, a period when some remote archaeological sites were left unattended, thieves opportunistically broke into the 11th-century Kyauk-ku-umin Temple in Bagan, Myanmar's ancient capital city, and stole several 1000-year-old sandstone statues of the Buddha. There was no knowledge of the whereabouts of the stolen statues until 1991, when one of the statues, a 22-inch standing figure of the Buddha in dharmachakra mudra (the Buddha preaching his First Sermon), appeared in a Sotheby's catalogue, slated for sale at auction in New York City on October 28, 1991.Sotheby’s, Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian Art, New York, October 28, 1991, auction catalogue, Lot 104. Art dealer Richard K. Diran of San Francisco, who claimed to have purchased the statue in Bangkok, had consigned the statue to Sotheby's for auction. An astute anonymous observer recognized the statue as one of the stolen Buddha images (a photograph showing the statue in situ in its temple niche had been published years earlier in an academic text and the statue had a preexisting and identifying break just above the knees).Gordon H. Luce, Old Burma-Early Pagán (Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin for Artibus Asiae and The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 1970), Volume Three, Plate 142 f. Upon this discovery, Sotheby's was informed, and it withdrew the statue from the sale, and, in turn, contacted the FBI. The FBI impounded the statue and conducted an investigation. After considering the possibility of a criminal prosecution for trafficking in stolen property, the United States Department of Justice, on August 15, 1994, instead initiated a civil proceeding, known as an interpleader proceeding, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, for the purpose of determining who was the rightful owner of the Buddha statue—the country of Myanmar or art dealer Richard K. Diran. That legal proceeding, United States v. Richard K. Diran and The Union of Myanmar, 94 CIV. 5898, was assigned to U.S. District Judge John E. Sprizzo. Jack Daulton represented Myanmar (through Myanmar's Permanent Representative to the United Nations) in the litigation, on a pro bono basis. Dr. Richard Cooler, Professor of Art History at Northern Illinois University, and Director of the Center for Burma studies, provided expert assistance in connection with the case.Sharman Stein, "Buddha Statue Incites Art War," Chicago Tribune, December 27, 1994, section 2, pgs. 1 and 4.Naazish Yar Khan, "Precious Stone: How A Dekalb Professor Cracked The Case Of The Stolen Buddha," Chicago Tribune, May 28, 1995."Turning the Wheel of the Law: The Quest to Recover the Image of the Standing Buddha," documentary film directed by Lori Liggett and Laura Vazquez (Twisted Sisters Production, 1996).
The case presented some interesting legal questions of, among other issues, state immunity (foreign sovereign immunity) and Choice of law (Myanmar, Thailand, or USA). As a threshold matter, in order to participate in the proceeding (through joinder as a nominal defendant), Myanmar, relying upon Daulton's legal opinion, had to agree to a limited waiver of its immunity, and submission to the jurisdiction of the U.S. District Court, for sole purposes of the interpleader proceeding. This case was the first time, and perhaps the only time, that Myanmar has waived its immunity to suit in a U.S. court. Notably, this case also was the first time that a Southeast Asian nation litigated a cultural property claim in the U.S. After a period of acrimonious litigation, Diran agreed unconditionally to relinquish his claim to the Buddha statue. And, in 1995, Judge Sprizzo entered a consent decree, drafted by Daulton, adjudicating that Myanmar held full and exclusive ownership of the Buddha statue.
Following the successful conclusion of the litigation, and pursuant to Daulton's pro bono agreement with Myanmar, the Buddha statue was placed on exhibition for one year at the Northern Illinois University Art Museum."Ancient Sculpture Begins a Journey Home," Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, February 8, 1995, Vol. 141, No. 27. pg. 1 Eventually, the statue made its way back to Myanmar where it is now the centerpiece of the new Buddhist art gallery at the National Museum of Myanmar (Yangon).Cherry Thein, “Buddha Image Returns From US,” The Myanmar Times, 11 February 2013, https://www.mmtimes.com/national-news/4024-buddha-image-returns-from-us.html“Severed Sandstone Buddha Image Returned to Myanmar from US,” Eleven (Myanmar), 26 February 2013."Unesco Convention of 1970: Report by Myanmar on the Implementation of the 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property," undated, circa September 2013, http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/pdf/Rapport_Myanmar.pdf“The Return of a Looted Buddha: the 25-Year Saga,” Looting, Hoarding, Collecting … Repatriation and Museums, exhibition brochure, NIU Art Museum and Elgin Public Museum of Natural History & Anthropology, 2014, https://www.niu.edu/looted/brochure/looted-tri-fold.pdf
The Daulton Collection