News from my Django Gallery project: it's coming along nicely. If you want sample code for AJAX with Django or XML-RPC with Django - look into it's source. I implemented parts of the blogger API, metaWeblog API and MoveableType API - just enough so that Photon can post pictures to my gallery.
AJAX is used for logged in users to change the title of pictures and folders by just clicking the title and for activating the toolbox on the backside of pictures. Additionally the gallery includes the usual PIL stuff like thumbnailing - I am especially proud of the flipped corner look for folder thumbnails 
Other stuff worth looking into might be the usage of lazy evaluation to push stuff into the template without precalculating it - it's only calculated when the template actually uses it. And interesting might be the abstraction of the filesystem based content - only the base path is stored in the database model, the rest of the gallery is in the filesystem (and can so be easily managed with FTP, SSH or directly on the unix shell).
Additionally you might look into it for handling of authentication - user registration isn't yet done, but will follow some day. As will comments and RSS - but I have to write that, first. And I am starting to write documentation - docstrings in the code and documentation pages in the wiki.
