Is there a way to have two Wordpress (or similar) blogs, side by side on the same page?

[MysteryGuest]

Well, Wordpress has a multi blog option.

http://mu.wordpress.org/

But it really sounds like you just need to find a theme with 2 columns and then run stories in one and run galleries in the other. There are a couple of Wordpress plugins that manage galleries nicely, the SimpleViewer Wordpress plugin comes to mind.