[4][5] 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),[4] currently on long-term loan to the Albertinum, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, the museum of modern art in Dresden.

[8] 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.

[13][14] 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.

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.

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.

And, in 1995, Judge Sprizzo entered a consent decree, drafted by Daulton, adjudicating that Myanmar held full and exclusive ownership of the Buddha statue.

[23][24][25][26][27] 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.

[39] For example, a 2011 exhibition at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, Washington, entitled "Gabriel von Max: Be-tailed Cousins and Phantasms of the Soul," centered upon a loan of more than fifty of The Daulton Collection's many works by the artist.

[42] Daulton has also gifted artworks to museums, including, in 2024, a drawing by artist Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl to the Instituto Centrale per la Grafica, Ministerio della Cultura (Ministry of Culture (Italy), Rome;[43] in 2000, ten prints by German symbolist artist Max Klinger to the Art Institute of Chicago;[44] and, in 1998, three artworks from Tibet and Cambodia to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia.

[66][67] Daulton and his partner Roz Ho have also provided financial support to paleoanthropological research and exploration undertaken by the Institute of Human Origins (Donald Johanson, founding director), Arizona State University, where Daulton is on the Research Council,[68] and at the Turkana Basin Institute (Louise Leakey, director), Stony Brook University.