Dialogue with... paintings

I was having a walk downtown when I simply overheard a conversation between a little girl and her father:
" What is there in this building, daddy?" the girl innocently asked. " An art museum" the reply came. After a few seconds the girl continued :" What is an art museum?". " It is the house of painters, it is a place where we go when we want to see famous artists and their paintings" the response came, but before the father could finish, she asked " Why should we go and see the paintings?"...When I turned my face towards the little girl I could see her father grabbing her hand, taking a few steps away from the building and saying "Look! There is an ice cream stand over there! Let's go and have some, shall we?"...
"A great question asked" I immediately thought, smiling at the father's reaction. Then it got me thinking: what would my response be. I actually realized this question would fit the entire attitude of the 21st century average person towards the artistic pursuits, towards the value and time spent on contemplating the best artists of all times. There are so many names and so many paintings ready to speak to us, ready to initiate those types of inner dialogues between the human soul and the unknown or unthinkable of the outer world... these encounters are the ones we stopped having or we simply have less and less because of the rush for material gatherings, for a safer and better life, for a long-term job or for a house that could/should become ours. "Who's got the time for all these when one should have three jobs to pay one's bills?!" would be a pertinent question.
Nevertheless these artistic encounters can only take place if we offer these huge personalities the chance to talk back and answer the question themselves. Any information related to the work of the most FAMOUS ARTISTS can share some light into the mind  and give us a different perspective on the human value. Needless to say that the great works are representations of LIFE regardless of a certain political/administrative trend, they portray  the human nature stripped of its artificial clothes, immortalized on canvas so that each time we stand in front of a painting we find answers to the fears we have, to the love we share, to the life we lead. Let's take a few works and see what they could speak about:
- Leonardo da Vinci's Monalisa engulfs the mystery or the struggle to get pass the first impression captivity...
-Van Gogh's Stary night reminds us of a fairytale, a great setting for stories, a realm of dreams and platonic love...
-Salvador Dali's The persistence of time relies on our constant ludic behaviour, frees us from any restraint and sets up a bridge between the facts and the fiction...
-Pablo Picasso's Woman with a fan challenges everything we had known before, forces us to interact with a different dimension of humanity, plays with the already-set patterns, re-creates the essence of colour and light.
Note: All the above are a personal view of the paintings, a game I like to play each time I stand in front of a painting; message decoding...
But isn't it fun, challenging, thrilling, rewarding? What if we start from here the pursuit of happiness? The art museum is a place of freedom and we can't deny this realm no matter how hard life is, no matter how deep the suffering or little the time we have in this world...
What would you answer to the little girl's question?