[1] Part of the American Renaissance movement, his monumental pieces include, Fountain of Time, Spirit of the Great Lakes, and The Eternal Indian.

[4] In 1892, while the art community of Chicago was preparing for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, chief architect Daniel Burnham expressed concern to Taft that the sculptural adornments to the buildings might not be finished on time.

Taft asked if he could employ some of his female students as assistants (it was not socially accepted for women to work as sculptors at that time) for the Horticultural Building.

From that arose a group of talented women sculptors known as "the White Rabbits", which included Enid Yandell, Carol Brooks MacNeil, Bessie Potter Vonnoh, Janet Scudder, Julia Bracken, and Ellen Rankin Copp.

[5][6][7] As Taft grew older, his eloquence and compelling writing led him, along with Frederick Ruckstull, to the forefront of sculpture's conservative ranks, where he often served as a spokesperson against the modern and abstract trends that developed during his lifetime.

The revised 1925 version was to remain the standard reference on the subject until the art historian E. Wayne Craven published Sculpture in America in 1968.

In 1921, Taft published Modern Tendencies in Sculpture, a compilation of his lectures given at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Taft envisioned his Alma Mater as a benign and magnificent woman, about 14 ft (4.3 m) high and dressed in classical draperies, rising from a throne and advancing a step forward with outstretched arms in a gesture of generous greeting to her children.

[citation needed] The University of Illinois Archives has a series of photographs of most of Taft's important works, including many of their construction and preliminary models.

[13] Following more than a dozen years of work, Taft's Fountain of Time was unveiled at the west end of Chicago's Midway Plaisance in 1922.

The last major commission that Taft completed was two groups for the front entrance to the Louisiana State Capitol Building, dedicated in 1932.

[15] In 1965, his Chicago workplace at 6016 S. Ingleside Avenue (he moved there in 1906, when the building consisted merely of a brick barn) was designated a National Historic Landmark as Lorado Taft Midway Studios.