Image by Amanda Click/TheDigitel Artist David Hammons, the "House of the Future" was part of that year's Spoleto exhibition entitled "Places with a Past".

In 1991 Harlem-based artist David Hammons participated in an exhibition for that year's Spoleto named "Places with a Past", and today Hammonds' work sits on the East Side mildly enough.

Even a 1991 New York Times feature on the Spoleto Festival USA exhibition is gentle enough about Hammons' work: "Some works are worth preserving. The "House of the Future" has brought money and attention to the black section of Charleston. Because of Mr. Hammons, a dirt mound diagonally across from his magically illogical house is to become a little park. Instead of a billboard advertising cigarettes there will be a photograph of black children staring at a black nationalist flag rising out of the mound like the flag out of the sculptural mound of Iwo Jima."

Today Hammons' billboard, flag, and half-home are the last standing exhbit pieces after 21 years.

With that in mind Paul Bowers has written a re-cap feature on the artists' work and the now mostly forgotten controversy that surrounded the whole "Places with a Past" exhibit and Hammonds' work. It's a nice recap on one of Charleston's most long-standing Spoleto impacts.

Take a read of the piece over here.

We previously featured Hammons' half-house in our roundup of "Charleston's most offbeat abodes". If you've never seen the house and flag/posted, head to the corner of America and Reid streets.