Artist Ellen Wagener captures the beauty in nature here in Iowa — the heavenly colors of a country sunset, the stillness of a cornfield on a calm morning, the ominous green-grey hue of a storm.

“There are a lot of people who think of Iowa as ‘flyover country’..., and maybe we all think this way about where we live, that there is more beauty somewhere else. And Ellen said I have always thought the Iowa landscape and agriculture is the most beautiful thing in the world,” says David Schmitz, executive director of the Dubuque Museum of Art, which is hosting a special exhibit of Wagener’s art this...