À votre santé! : A Century of French Public-Health Campaigns

By Daniel Okafor

From 18 September 2026 to 28 May 2027, the free exhibition À votre santé! at the Archives nationales’ Pierrefitte site traces a century of French public-health campaigns through posters, brochures, educational games and films. Its subject is medicine outside the clinic: warnings, instructions and slogans made for children, families and wider audiences.

Located at 59 Rue Guynemer, 93200 Saint-Denis, the venue sits on Line 13 at Saint-Denis-Université. The French title means “To Your Health!” Admission is free.

What does the century actually include?

The exhibition draws its core material from the collections of the French Committee for Health Education. That provenance gives the show an institutional frame: it presents organised public-health education as part of visual culture, rather than assembling a loose history from advertising alone.

The display includes posters, brochures, educational games, films, commercials and advertisements. Its breadth is useful. The available description is thinner, naming no individual poster titles or designers.

Across the century, campaigns address tuberculosis, tobacco, alcohol and AIDS. A tuberculosis poster and an AIDS campaign belong to the same broad field of prevention, but the exhibition asks visitors to compare their visual codes as well as their slogans.

The National Archives describes its purpose as tracing “a century of health awareness” through material that also records changing imagery and French society. That is a serious claim because it treats design, wording and placement as evidence of how public campaigns sought to shape behaviour, not as nostalgic decoration.

The promise is clear. The curatorial account remains general: no curator, campaign designer or advertising agency is identified in the listing, despite the show’s interest in exactly those roles.

How did campaigns reach their audiences?

Graphics and slogans evoke the places where the material circulated, from schools and waiting rooms to television in later decades. Messages were tailored for children, families and different audiences, which makes distribution part of a campaign’s meaning rather than a neutral setting.

The National Archives’ stated method is to ask “who designs it, how it seeks to reach its audience, and what role advertising professionals play in it.” That wording shifts attention from images as finished objects to design as labour, testing the familiar claim that a memorable slogan explains the whole campaign.

It also widens the field of public history. The distinction matters because circulation changes who can encounter a message, when they encounter it and what social setting surrounds it. Television extends a campaign’s reach; the archive preserves evidence of that shift.

What will visitors actually see?

Panels and a screen showing a montage of health-education films form part of the display alongside posters and other printed material. The exhibition therefore joins graphic artefacts with moving images, showing both the designed campaign and the public-health instruction screened for audiences.

Some posters and advertisements remain in collective memory long after their campaigns stop running. That premise gives the exhibition its emotional pull, but memory favours the recognisable. The listing gives no selection rationale, so it cannot show how the display balances famous slogans against less familiar material.

Placed within the National Archives, these objects become evidence of changing visual culture rather than disposable medical ephemera. The show asks visitors to read images critically: what made a warning stick, which audience it assumed and where its authority came from. Those questions matter because the visual force of a slogan does not, by itself, disclose who made it or whom it assumed would comply.

What has the listing left unsaid?

The visitor information was updated on 2 November 2026 at 3.10 p.m. Although the headline places the exhibition in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, the street address identifies the Archives nationales’ Pierrefitte site in Saint-Denis. The address is therefore the firmer location, while the headline’s geography is less precise.

The listing supplies the overall dates but no daily opening hours, and it gives no individual campaign titles, named designers or curator. That absence does not mean the exhibition lacks labels or scholarship; it means the available account cannot support it. The official site, www.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr, is the only channel named for further details.

Where does the institutional story go next?

By placing the committee’s collections within a national archive, the National Archives presents public-health graphics as social history rather than disposable advertising. The exhibition continues through 28 May 2027, but the announcement names no companion catalogue, touring programme or digital selection. The next chapter is not yet described.