LaHotan received both a B.A. and an M.F.A. from Columbia University, New YOrk. In 1953 he was awarded a Fullbright Fellowship and studied in Germany for over two years. In 1973 and again in 1977 he won a Purchase Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; and in 1988 he won the National Academy's Benjamin Altman Landscape Prize.
He has had solo exhibitions at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (1969); Hall Gallery, Washington, D.C. (1978 and 1982); and, beginning in 1968, numerous exhibitions at Kraushaar Galleries, New York. He first showed in the National Academy's annual exhibitions in 1986.
LaHotan's work can be found in the permanent collections of the Joseph Hirshorn Museum, Washington, D.C. and the Yonkers Museum of Art, New York among others. He taught at the Dalton School in New York for thirty-six years. He resides in New York and is represented by Kraushaar Galleries Inc.