In 1973, Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario purchased a large whalebone sculpture to provide a focal point for a new building on campus. The piece had been carved by a young Inuit artist, Daniel Nookiguak, a resident of Broughton Island in the Northwest Territories. In 2002, faculty and students of the Art Conservation program at Queen’s were asked to evaluate the condition of the sculpture and to develop a proposal for its long-term preservation. An extraordinary student project was subsequently set up to achieve these goals. This article outlines the challenges that were faced as well as the lessons learned. A brief discussion on the past and present uses of whalebone in the Arctic is included. The students and their instructors were responsible for all phases of the project relating to conservation, including environmental monitoring, condition reporting, scientific analysis, and consolidation testing, as well as other tasks such as the construction of new mounts and the design of a new display case.